The simplest way to say this is probably that everyone has their own preferences when comparing a flawed headphone vs another but the purist will always look for pure neutrality. Neutrality/transparency when everything comes together is after all the Holy Grail and is the reason why most people stick around ausio forums getting obsessed for years in the first place.
On the first point: there's variation in biological and psychoacoustic qualities from person to person, and that would certainly play a role in how offensive someone might find the treble of a particular headphone compared to the next, which is why I define transparency more in terms of how distracting or problematic a pair of headphones sounds to the individual, which isn't a fixed target. However I think it's still meaningful to speak of general trends in that people seem to generally prefer headphones that measure better.
On the second point: I should clarify this a bit. By "denying subjective experience" I didn't mean that someone is denying the existence of subjectivity, but rather denying the objectivity of perceived difference, ie. the mantra "all amps sound the same" (which is itself a misappropriation of what nwavguy actually said if I'm not mistaken; I haven't read his blog in ages however). This would be more akin to magnifying a single standard to encompass all difference.
Yes, that's really misread. All properly designed amps sound the same. There are other qualifiers such that certain headphones are more sensitive than others to non zero output impedance or (rarely) current requirements, as well as lack of power which may lead to clipping.His recommendations are for a perfect amplifier - since it can be achieved relatively cheaply, why not do that?
All properly designed amps sound the same.
