Sure there are absolute truths that stand in and of themselves in high-end audio whether we believe them or not. For example.
- Every last playback system consumes electrical energy and generates vibrations.
- Even though electrical and mechanical energies are requirements, both energies can potentially generate unwanted energies.
- Not sufficiently addressing unwanted energies can compromise what we hear in the room.
- High-end audio is actually a combined effort between two primary sectors. The fidelity of electrical signal processing perhaps starting all the way back at the utility company and ending at the speaker drivers and the fidelity of the mechanical signal starting at the speaker drivers then interfacing with a given room's acoustics inclduing any room acoustic anomalies.
- The electrical signal inputs will be converted to mechanical signal outputs at the speaker drivers and ultimately converted to acoustic signal outputs as the speakers interface with the room's acoustics.
- A counterfeit is never identical to the original.
- Every component requires an electrical connection to its adjacent component all the way to the speaker drivers.
- Distortions (inferiorities) of various types exist and some will sonically impact our playback presentations.
- Some distortion types will more severely impact soncis than other types.
- A resulting high-end audio playback presentation is essentially a 1-way street implying that energy whether electrical or mechanical is traveling in one direction - provided such energies travels are not trapped or impeded.
- Energy's first order of behavior is to travel.
- When an energy's ability to travel is trapped or impeded, it will begin to release its energy within the confined spaced and impact other areas.
- Even though the electrical signal processing sector MAY influence the downstream outcome of the speaker / room interface, the downstream speaker / room interface cannot influence the upstream electrical signal processing - with the exception of unwanted energies.
- There exists superior as well as inferior materials, designs, principles, philosophies, methods, etc and combinations thereof.
- There's no guarantee that we're always measuring the right things, that we're always measuring correctly, and there's no guarantee that even if we were measuring the right things we're always sufficiently understanding any such findings.
- Not everybody can be right or correct.
- If there exists superior and inferior means, then there also exists the ability to be more right and more wrong than others.
- Human beings are competitive by nature and it's nonsensical to think or espouse such comtetitive spirits cease when it comes to high-end audio.
- Since our collective responses in high-end audio forums summarily prove that we're rather diverse regarding most every aspect of high-end audio including our ability to discern / interpret what we hear, a consensus proves nothing whatsoever.
- A belief held or practice executed a certain way over many years is not proof that the belief or practice was ever correct.
- Positive results from the implementation of a product employing an inferior design, principle, material, execution, and/or method is not proof that the product is genuinely superior. Rather, it only proves it's genuinely less inferior than its competition.
- The amount of money spent on an endeavor proves little or nothing. At least from a performance perspective.
- Every last recording is inferior to the original performance.
- Every last playback presentation is inferior to the music info embedded in a given recording.
- Every last wire, component, speaker, and system is less than perfect.
- Extreme results can only occur by extreme efforts. Never by token or half-assed efforts. Unless of course the planets happen to be in perfect alignment.
- Years of experience is no guarantee one is more right/correct than another.
- Nobody is completely objective. Especially those who pretend to be.
- Unknowns always exist.
Just to list a few. So even though high-end audio may well be as subjective a hobby as it gets, there still remains a remnant of absolute truths we can hang our hats on. And presumably it's imperative that we recognize and understand some of these absolute truths if one is to take performance seriously.
Hardly. Such "best" items can and do exist in perhaps every sector of life whether or not anybody (including the original designer) possesses the ability to recognize them as such.
Indeed, each of us can and do possess different tastes and preferences, different levels of understanding and abilities to discern / interpret what we hear. But by no means does that negate any such absolutes of what we could, should, or ought to hear.
