Connoisseurship is a lot like marriage. There is no objectivity in choosing a partner or what to be partnered with, and our criteria is always changing anyway. None of us wakes up every morning and repeats the same pledge of allegiance, or if we do we are just fooling ourselves. We are willing to risk being fooled because that's how life stacks up. Many times we get fooled, but it turns out to be fortuitous after all.

Well, one big difference between wine and audio is that the chemical composition provably differs from one wine or vintage to the next, whereas the composition of an audio signal, pre-speaker, is electrical and it does not vary based on the multitude of variables that can affect wine.  Some things can (an amplifier) and some things cannot, and so where you get into these big arguments is when someone argues that something changed the electrical signal when from an engineering/physics standpoint it cannot. So a somm. will carry more credibility than a guy playing with the direction of fuses. 

As others have mentioned, the wine industry isn't without it's conspiracy theories.  I'm fairly certain that professional "tasters" and "smellers" can be tested to on some level (i.e. at what concentration can they identify a known taste or smell) but I don't know if this is done.  I'm not into it at all, but I think the wine industry is based primarily on subjective evaluations of the taste along with how exclusive the product is.

The audiophile world is certainly similar in a lot of ways.  I think the controversies come from a couple of different directions.  One is that because audiophile equipment is, in theory, and engineered product there's an expectation that measurements on meaningful.  Another is that the placebo effect is absolutely (in my mind) in play for a lot of audiophile while there are a few with truly golden ears that detect differences that most simply cannot.  Another is that most audiophiles are influenced by expectation bias when it comes to hearing what are only differences.

Probably the biggest aspect, in my mind, is that so much of the industry relies on pseudoscience that many that have some understanding of the related physical and engineering simply lose all confidence.  I think that a lot of companies "design" by trial and error using their ears and then try to explain the differences scientifically.

I try to keep an open mind that there are systems and ears that transcend mine and my experience is very limited.  I have heard differences that I did not expect and in some cases don't understand how someone else might not hear the difference.

What really bugs me is when people compare two products that have little beyond the product type in common and then attribute the differences that they hear to a cherry picked attribute and then that experience becomes evidence for another audiophile.

@ghdprentice - I don't drink, but am fascinated with the concept that there are wines that people think smell like cat urine and still drink it.  If I needed to give a gift to a wine drinker...

@mceljo … horse sweat, not cat urine… my god man. What were you thinking? No one would drink wine that smelled like cat urine. 😊

But like all nuanced things… very small nuances of many flavors make up good wine. Fortunately I have not picked up undertones of horse sweat… but if I did… I am pretty sure it would go down the drain.

On the other hand I stay away from Malbecs… to me the have the bouquet of swamp gas. I don’t get why anyone would like it. But on the other hand many folks like audio systems that scape every detail off the media, stripe it of all musicality, and add a large portion of distortion and think it is an “audiophile sound”.