Sampling of Audio Gear

[E-Stat]

how can one claim that this AV gear is better than that one, or worse yet “mine is better than yours”?

When the reference is to the sound of live, unamplified music and that reviewer has regular exposure to said.

Also, I’ve always liked the sound of vinyl. There is something to it and it sounds very different from the digital mediums, but is the “vinyl sound” how its suppose to be?

True, but analog distortion is fundamentally different from Redbook CD distortion. Actually, a better reference than vinyl is analog tape, but such is rare.

With that in mind, it seems that the only real comparison is with numbers or specifications. Even then, all equipment would need to be measured with the exact same test equipment to make it objective.

The problem with that approach is that it assumes that the numbers convey the ability of a component to sound like live music. Unfortunately, most specifications fail miserably in this regard and are worse than useless. Worse? Many people use metrics like THD that bear little resemblance to the way our senses interpret music. As for me, I view ultra low THD numbers as inherently bad - simply because it is so easy to achieve them by means of using tons of negative feedback which creates numerous problems in the time domain. Ever heard a Crown IC-150 preamp? It was the most horrible sounding component for decades, yet it measured quite well.

rw