Your Most Prominent Audio Component

If neurology can be likened to capacitors and resistors then technically we are the most important component, and the variations from one human to the next vastly exceed the variations in components.

That’s a non sequitur. The standard model of neuronal membrane proporties applies to all humans and all vertebrates without any significant variability.

This thread was somewhat inspired by the midnight effect thread.

OK. You are excused.

I am the opposite of "bored" today.

Me, too. 😉

8th-note wrote: The neuron issue relates to an interesting idea about analog vs. digital. Most audiophiles (I think) believe that our brains and nervous systems work on an analog model. Our nervous system, however, much more closely resembles a digital network.

The nervous system, as opposed to individual neurons, uses processing that has both analog and digital properties.

This is significant because many in our hobby believe that digital is somehow unnatural and therefore inferior to analog.

I don't believe this is a good argument because the nervous system has no way to know how the information it receives from auditory transduction (or from other sensory systems) is created or processed; it has only the signals.  If those signals are suitably similar to those of a natural sound, it will sound natural.  Which is better?  If you believe in measurements, the answer is easy.