You are a horrible example of the intended target of this message.
AN OPEN LETTER TO CONSUMERS OF 'HIGH END' AUDIO EQUIPMENT
I don't preach. All I do is tell the simple truth. And I am not surprised or bothered by infantile tantrums posted by the believers in 'high-end' audio.
Unlike the high-end shamans and pontiffs, I don't claim to have any special perceptual or reasoning ability; I am willing to submit anything I say to rigorous testing and to the scrutiny of the real experts, most of whom have engineering degrees in audio and physics.
Your statements, on the other hand, are sloppy and slobbish and so is your 'thinking'. Your posts typify the loose 'thinking' of the slob snob that keeps 'high-end' consumer audio alive. You are a prime example of the target market that is so skillfully cultivated and manipulated by the 'high end' audio manufacturers and their 'journalist' fellow travelers.
You "have been reading stereo magazines since the late 1970s" but have done precious little thinking in all of that time. It's a shame, and I wish I could help you.
And though you are probably too willfully ignorant to benefit from anything I could tell you, I will give it a shot anyway, and try to keep the discussion simple.
Let's compare consumer audio to consumer video. Are there any 'golden-eyed videophiles' with perceptions and beliefs that do not square with plain old ordinary physics and engineering? Does anybody claim to see a video defect or artifact that cannot be measured or explained using basic physics? Why is that so? Why is audio seemingly (according the snake-oil salesmen of the high-end) so stubbornly resistant to scientific and engineering progress, whereas, in every other field you care to name, science and engineering works so well to explain any empirical fact or observation and to advance the subject?
The crux of the problem is that, in audio, unlike video, we have to rely on memory to compare A with B. And that stubborn and indubitable fact is why stringent controls are needed in listening tests of audio equipment. Because, as anyone with experience in a court of law will tell you, eyewitness testimony (which also relies on memory) is notoriously unreliable.
So, without proper controls, we could argue endlessly and inconclusively for eons about the sound of A vs. the sound of B.
So, here is my advice to you (and to anyone reading this who is similarly inclined): get your hands on an ABX box and test out empirically some of your beliefs. The hard truth that you discover may initially cause you a sleepless night or two, but you may be surprised at how liberating the truth can be. Following your ABX experience, you will have a choice: you can continue with your religion and reject, or somehow rationalize, with great difficulty, the facts; or you can, with a little thinking and reflection, reconsider and reject the mountains of hogwash the high-end 'authorities' are selling you and focus instead on what is really important: the sound and that which actually affects the sound. The high-end dullards will tell you that they believe only what they hear, but they are, to paraphrase George Santayana, much better at believing than they are at hearing.