is there an audiophile war going on

I think the war is in their heads, for the most part.

"01-25-15: Runnin
In some of the other forums, there are indeed people that proudly proclaim that all amps sound the same, all cables sound the same, all DACs and anything else have the same sound since they measure flat across the audio frequency range. Everything else is snake oil, they say, as they proudly run $3k-4k speakers off a receiver."

I've been known to have an opinion, on occasion, regarding this very topic, and have come to the conclusion that the type of people with the mindset that you're talking about, are in it just for the argument, and nothing more. Its like a psychological disorder. They don't want to get the truth of whatever they discuss because that would mean they couldn't argue any more. I know its difficult, buy my advice would be to try and ignore them. For all their talk of science and objectivity, they're the most subjective type of people in audio, by far. Its not even close.

"The problem is, they evangelize. Anyone caught saying that the amp they bought sounds way better than their old receiver gets attacked and mocked."

Yes, but the upside is that the madder they get, the better your system sounds.

"I read a paper by someone that writes papers and they said you can't here that! So there! Case closed!"

lol.

Tom32,

Its good to see that you're using brain instead of some silly meter. Its not too hard to figure out you can't measure things like timbre. Most EE's pretend that stuff like that doesn't exist. You're way ahead of most of your peers. We need more designers like you.

"02-07-15: Zavato
I frequently visit SH's site and I've not noticed any of the knocks noted in this thread. I own Pass electronics and I've not been knocked for that."

Have you ever seen hydrogen audio? Its something that has to be seen to be believed. Here's an example. The person who made this statement was threatened by the moderators to be banned from the site if he didn't show more respect to the other members.

"I use iTunes in conjunction with Audirvana Plus in iTunes-integrated mode (i.e., it "hijacks" iTunes and plays it through its own player, which has some advantages). "

That's all he said. Below is a link to the post if anyone cares to read it.

http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=96309&st=0

I think they kicked him off the site, so he posted the message from the mod's on a thread at computeraudiophile.com. Here's a link to that, as well.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/ok-i-tried-hydrogen-audio-it-didnt-go-too-well-13506/

Maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of this than I should, but I just find stuff like this amazing. I don't think the guy said anything out of line.