this discussion, if you remove some of the arrogance and criticism, is actually quite thought provoking. Some good points have been made, but some of the analogy falls a bit short. In most sports(and I guess car racing is a sport, to a degree), there are absolute measurements, objective, of who wins, who is the fastest/strongest, etc. A participant can have fine shoes, a fine racket, the best suspension/engine, and even the most beautiful /perfect technique, but not be a winner or the best.
The perception on home reproduced sound certainly does have objective things that can be described, and experience does garner our ability to pick those things out and have the vocabulary to describe them, but at the end of the day, the experience still is subjective, and one individual can enjoy one type of "sound" that differs from another listeners preference. Perhaps oenophilia is a better analogy....Perhaps this all goes back to Harry Pearson's "absolute sound", the truly live experience. Some recordings and systems approach this, and those are limited, IMHO, to certain types of music and venues. Otherwise, our systems do well to "remind us" of the live experience.....Some of our participants are more or less confident/arrogant/opinionated than others...that is what you call "personality"
The perception on home reproduced sound certainly does have objective things that can be described, and experience does garner our ability to pick those things out and have the vocabulary to describe them, but at the end of the day, the experience still is subjective, and one individual can enjoy one type of "sound" that differs from another listeners preference. Perhaps oenophilia is a better analogy....Perhaps this all goes back to Harry Pearson's "absolute sound", the truly live experience. Some recordings and systems approach this, and those are limited, IMHO, to certain types of music and venues. Otherwise, our systems do well to "remind us" of the live experience.....Some of our participants are more or less confident/arrogant/opinionated than others...that is what you call "personality"