Persoanlly, I think the whole blind testing and ear training thing is most valuable in putting the world of audio into context. Anyone going off on a hype train or on and on about how cables and break-in totally changed their headphones is just so obviously full of crap after you've heard how hard it is to tell the differences between stuff.And then, once you get good at it and can tell the subtle differences between things, you can begin to more closely identify those subtle characteristics with your own sense of musical pleasure, and possibly do a better job of honing in on the gear you like as you put together a system within your budget.But in the end, it matters very little with regard to the exquisite experience of listening to music you love. Except that maybe you'll have a sense of confidence in the gear you've acquired and know you don't really need to keep looking anymore, rather than being unsure and worried that there may be something better out there.
That's what it's all about. Getting lost in the music. For some, the content and structure of the music is enough and they could be content for life with their smartphone and included ear buds. For others, they have had a transcendental experience with music either at a live performance or having played an instrument and want to get back to that experience as often as possible. Nailing that hyper accurate reproduction of reality is simply not as easy as some would like to make it seem, but it can be worth it for some. Everyone has different preferences. Jason had a great point that many should just step back and reevaluate where they are going with audio relative to other life choices they could be making. Life is about priorities and making choices. For me, considering how bad live music has gotten for some genres with terrible concert engineers, a lot of times I can get closer to the real music at home and save $100-$200 a pop per bad performance. So it's not a bad investment per se. Besides, the transcendental musical experience is simply priceless to me. Then you have recording quality and for others, greater fidelity might actually take you further away from your music depending on how you listen.Everything is relative and personal.
I don't really think any of those are good analogies for the topic at hand. You're talking about big life choices for one thing, which is a good bit different than trying to a/b very subtle differences between gear as a means of nothing more than a hobby.
None of these analogies are comparable to the subject at hand. I am not saying there is or isn't a difference in the dacs/amps being tested but this is a completely illogical post.
I'd hope they're not good analogies. (Actually, I'd hope that they're hyperbole. Especially re: Mitochondria.) But it's important that you framed it in those terms. The gist of what I was trying to get to is that improvement, necessary or not, can always be questioned as too difficult, not worth it, not worth the cost, etc. etc. What we're really discussing is, in a somewhat concrete sense, a question of value. You commented that my examples were about "about big life choices" and not about "nothing more than a hobby." These are value judgements. Frix's assertion that being able to determine finite differences "doesn't matter in the end" or is an end that exists to only "justify ridicoulus [sic] priced gear" is also a value judgement. What's really vital is having a way of articulating value. With big stuff, questions of value are pretty self-evident. But value/worth in a hobby is always about subtle gradients of value. What is X worth to you and why? The audio hobby has a number of variables that can stand in for X ranging from concrete, material aspects (ergonomics, aesthetics), to performance metrics (resolution, tonal balance, microdetail extraction, transient attack, output power), to economic aspects (product cost, manufacture location, distribution network, advertising and review influence), and also social aspects (forum culture, live meets, website readership, etc.). Any single thing in this hobby is an interdependent mix of the above factors. Ear training is going to have marginal value for some and be highly valued by others. (See: Tyll's comment on how valuable he thinks it is vis-a-vis context.) A high cost piece of equipment is going to have marginal value for some and be highly valued by others. Buying something that's made in one nation-state rather than another is going to have marginal value for some and be highly valued for others. The tough part about knowing that is also understanding that one person's relative structure of value can't be easily (or at all) universalized.
I personally value ear training, at least in the form of the Philips Golden Ears challenge, as it has helped me with understanding what I'm listening to better.
That's what it's all about. Getting lost in the music. For some, the content and structure of the music is enough and they could be content for life with their smartphone and included ear buds. For others, they have had a transcendental experience with music either at a live performance or having played an instrument and want to get back to that experience as often as possible. Nailing that hyper accurate reproduction of reality is simply not as easy as some would like to make it seem, but it can be worth it for some.
See this post I can relate to because there's no outlandishness here. I don't disagree with you at all and I think you'd have been better off just coming out and saying this.
