I don't want to beat a dead horse but I'm bugged.

I do believe you need a happy medium of both sensory perception and the hard data to support that perception.

Neither side is right or wrong and we all interpret data and sensory inputs differently. 

What's the old saying  "One man's garbage is another mans gold" ????

You like what you like why argue. 

I personally would not trust user listening tests unless they don't know what they are listening to. The potential to fool ourselves is too high.

I wish I could be fooled into believing a system sounds good when it sounds bad. I'd save a lot of time or money. It's easy to "fool" oneself on a blind or short-term listening session. That is why the gold standard is long term evaluation. It's very hard to convince yourself somethings sounds good after you have experienced all it's flaws. 

It's easy to "fool" oneself on a blind or short-term listening session. That is why the gold standard is long term evaluation. It's very hard to convince yourself somethings sounds good after you have experienced all it's flaws

ABX and blind tests are the platinum standard. Sighted tests are dismissed as irrelevant, no way to have a control for bias. I fail to understand this idiotic aversion to science.  

I do understand that a set of components, each with preferred set of measurements in allignment to accuracy would result in a whole that deviates less from this objective than those that deviate/color the whole. Following this, the system conforming with the objective requires less interpretation by the end user, being subject to human sensory failability. I get it.

So, prescribe to everyone components, or a set of components making up an entire system. I'm sure you guys could come up with a number of systems meeting your objective criteria to prescribe to us subjectivists. We then could have face offs between the objective systems and any number of subjectively chosen systems. What do you think the results would be? I presume great variability to the point  there would be no valid conclusions drawn other than humans are subjective. Individual/subjective human sensory perceptions would upset any conjecture humans would choose the objective system by any statistically compelling margin.

And so, imposing some objective measurement/accuracy criteria in evaluating hierarchy of audio components/systems is futile effort. People will continue to choose for themselves the sound qualities they prefer, you or I may not concur with their choices, but this is of no matter.

In speaking about First Watt amps just now in another thread, it comes to mind how Nelson Pass, a designer/engineer of some renown, has any number of these amps, with different colors we use to synergize with entire systems. I"m quite sure Nelson understands accuracy, linearity in regard to audio design, yet he allows and understands the human psyche and all their unique desires and preferences. He also understands that even at the level of individual parts, each has unique sound qualities, what some would dismissively define as color.

I for one am in love with color, I love all the colors we can perceive. I love we have choices of tubes, push pull, SET, all varieties of power and signal tubes, I love SS, class A, AB, D, I love all the various choices of parts, boutique parts included, I love all varieties of speakers, dacs, turntables, cartridges. I could go on and on, but I love the CHOICES we all have, color is a wonderful thing!  Black and white, zero sum games, prescribed heirarchies no fun, and more importantly, not the whole truth. Reductionist conclusions replaces critical thinking far too often these days.

Yes, individual human perceptions can be confounding, wrongheaded, infuriating, etc. In the end it is what it is, always seems pithy philosophical comment to my mind, but it is concise and true.