Oh but it really is the point. What I have suggested implies there is something that manifests under close scrutiny that shouldn't.
Well, it really is
a point, I suppose, but not one that this thread is getting at. Audiophiles don't deny, dismiss and insist upon hearing things beyond the measurements because of something you may have discovered 15 years ago. They do it every day, so they can continue to believe in the objective superiority of their subjective choices. I understand that sounds a bit harsh, but it is pretty hard to deny. Go to any audiophile site and search tubes/valves/vinyl and see how often you find fantasies like more natural, infinite resolution, musical, life-like, etc.
Or just read Fremer.
That should warrant further investigation, both in double-blind ABX testing and - should these findings be found to be repeatable - trying to investigate what is happening from an audio perspective that isn't being picked up by conventional measurements. This has nothing to do with 'musicality'... two products that should have performed in an identical manner were looking to fail to pass an identicality test. If you want to wish this away with no further investigation, that's fine... but you'll forgive me if I question your motives for wanting to do so.
I don't want to "wish this away with no further investigation," Alan, I'm just not interested in doing the investigation personally. And, by the way, if it hasn't been found to be repeatable, if it hasn't been subjected to further investigation or even scrutiny in the past 15 years, yet it is still being used as evidence that measurements don't tell the whole story (something I find believable enough, by the way), I'm not sure I'm even interested in taking it seriously.
As to the whole 'measurement don't matter' thing, there is something of a paradox left unexplored. Those who make the biggest noise about audiophiles and their 'measurements don't matter' stance are often those who make an equally big noise about supporting DBTs. But if you look at the Clark and Masters 'Do all amplifiers sound the same?' DBT survey from Stereo Review in the late 1980s, the results suggest that the measurements don't matter after all... because those findings suggest they all sound virtually identical, irrespective of the measured performance.
I haven't read that one in awhile, Alan, but of course things can measure differently and not be audibly different. That doesn't necessarily mean that the measurements don't matter. It may mean that the instruments can and have measured differences that humans can't hear. Or it could mean, as I think you're implying, that they can measure things that humans can't hear under DBT conditions. Of course those conditions vary from test to test, are controllable, and this answer cannot be anything more than situational, but I'll readily admit that instruments can measure differences we:
a) can't hear at all
b) can't hear under any kind of circumstances in which we are listening to music, not trained for and listening to audio reproduction distortions.
And I could not possibly overstate how insignificant the distortions that fall into category B are to music lovers. Gearheads and engineers? YMMV.
Measurement is a useful tool in defining the basic parameters of a component, determining whether it lives up to the empirical standards laid down by the company that made the product and finding prospective happy matches between products where relevant. It's importance should not be understated, but - judging by the evidence - neither should it be overstated.
You won't get any argument out of me on that point.
P