What's the point indeed. The blind test tells all. As someone who has taken two blind tests it was a subject that interested me, so I looked for all the blind tests I could find and the only one that ever showed a hint of a possible difference in amps was John Atkinson's (of Stereophile), who said there was a "slight" difference between amps. And he admitted there was a measured frequency response difference between the two amps and that the difference heard could be the interaction with the particular speakers used. He seemed to be fair in his analysis that given the small difference between those who could tell the difference and those who couldn't, along with a myriad of other explanations (and excuses), he didn't come down with a hard-core "Yes" or "No" answer, but one with a ton of caveats and leaning toward the suspicion that only a few highly trained people could "really" hear a difference.
You can read the whole test for yourself.
https://www.stereophile.com/features/113/index.html
And just in case you missed the Stereo Review article that stirred this whole subject into a firestorm, here it is.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060313071857/http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/Amp_Sound.pdf
You can read the whole test for yourself.
https://www.stereophile.com/features/113/index.html
And just in case you missed the Stereo Review article that stirred this whole subject into a firestorm, here it is.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060313071857/http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/Amp_Sound.pdf