objective vs. subjective rabbit hole


There are many on this site who advocate, reasonably enough, for pleasing one’s own taste, while there are others who emphasize various aspects of judgment that aspire to be "objective." This dialectic plays out in many ways, but perhaps the most obvious is the difference between appeals to subjective preference, which usually stress the importance of listening, vs. those who insist on measurements, by means of which a supposedly "objective" standard could, at least in principle, serve as arbiter between subjective opinions.

It seems to me, after several years of lurking on and contributing to this forum, that this is an essential crux. Do you fall on the side of the inviolability of subjective preference, or do you insist on objective facts in making your audio choices? Or is there some middle ground here that I’m failing to see?

Let me explain why this seems to me a crux here. Subjective preferences are, finally, incontestable. If I prefer blue, and you prefer green, no one can say either of us is "right." This attitude is generous, humane, democratic—and pointless in the context of the evaluation of purchase alternatives. I can’t have a pain in your tooth, and I can’t hear music the way you do (nor, probably, do I share your taste). Since this forum exists, I presume, as a source of advice from knowledgable and experienced "audiophiles" that less "sophisticated" participants can supposedly benefit from, there must be some kind of "objective" (or at least intersubjective) standard to which informed opinions aspire. But what could possibly serve better as such an "objective standard" than measurements—which, and for good reasons, are widely derided as beside the point by the majority of contributors to this forum?

To put the question succinctly: How can you hope to persuade me of any particular claim to audiophilic excellence without appealing to some "objective" criteria that, because they claim to be "objective," are more than just a subjective preference? What, in short, is the point of reading all these posts if not to come to some sort of conclusion about how to improve one’s system?

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Forums are quite useful in educating oneself.  By reading, one can learn what's important to a majority of the posters and apply this to your own preferences.  For example, you might be interested in a turntable, By reading you might determine what a good place to start.  While not everyone agrees on XYZ model,  all three are discussed most often, I can look at those first.  If you want a "better" turntable, reading the posts on turntables can educate you on what the step up brands are and what might make sense to focus on. 

Brad     

objective is about machines only

subjective is about how you like it to sound only

I do not hope to persuade you. Only to share what worked for me and invite you to try it.

It is interesting to see both camps picking a topic like this as a hill to die on.  I guess I’m of the belief that if something sounds good to my ears,it sounds good to my ears.  To me this hobby is about reproducing music to my tastes.  However,if someone likes to narrow gear down by measurements, I’m not paying their bills,they get to choose whichever they like.  The way we hear things,is certainly open to interpretation.  

"gear brand name tasting fetichists" and "alleged objective measuring tools fetichists" are only that : gear fetichist ot tool fetichist....

We must develop our listening abilities with a systematic CORRELATIVE set of listenings  experiments between objective dispositions and devices and subjective evaluation this is called : acoustic and psycho-acoustic science...

Opposing objective measures and subjective evaluation is child play...negating the importance of one over the other child play too...