I don't see any dichotomy between being objective and being subjective about studying sound and sound reproducing systems. Since the sounds we hear are like all other sensory stimuli our reaction to our environment it is subjective. But it is also entirely reasonable to try to analyze those stimuli to understand what makes one seem different from another. Since the original promise of high fidelity was to exactly reproduce the auditory experience of hearing music (the real thing, not the already artifical recreation of it) the scientific method for studying it seems pretty straightforward. Study the physics of the stimuli, acousics and study the ability to perceive and remember the stimuli, psychoacoustics. Combining sufficient knowledge of the two sciences, the criteria for reproducing the stimuli with sufficient accuracy to recreate the sujective reaction to it are established. The engineering to meet those criteria and the testing to determine that they have been met are also indicated. And therein lies the rub. The scientific knowledge base for both is entirely inadequate. Read a book on acoustics and you may be even more confused by the end of it than you were before you started. What you'll get mostly is an incoherent tapestry of parameters that are arcane, sometimes self contradictory, often limited to certain cases while not applicable to others, and fail to impart a true understanding of either sound or how sound interacts with rooms. At the other end, knowledge of psychoacoustics is also inadequate. Even something as simple as how the brain determines directionality isn't understood. In that example the proof of inadequacy is easy. Binaural recording meets every one of the three criteria usually specified and yet the system is a failure. More complex aspects of perception of music are also not understood. How do spatial and temporal variables affect the perception of tonality or perceived power of the source for example. So people called objectivists have a long way to go before any engineering criteria or test data will be of real use.
On the other hand so called subjectivists have no more insight than objecivists do. They seem to grope endlessly trying anything and everything they can find, think of, imagine. They come up with the wildest most preposterous theories to explain the rationale behind what they do. In a sense when they start espousing their latest pet explanations they are attempting to be scientists without science. Their arguments quickly get very tiresome for me. One of the most amusing however who is an endless source of hilarity is May Belt in England. She'll advise you for example to water the plants in your listening room with unfluoridated water. She reminds me of a commune called "The University of the Trees" in Hollister California I once read about a long time ago. They believed that if you worshiped their small pyramids it would keep you healthy and your car's engine in tune. Anyone want to buy some "tees" to lift their wires off the floor?
