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the blind men and the elephant

You know the fable?

In this case, the "elephant" is simply the reader's trust of the critic. You either trust the critic's taste, or you don't. It's that simple.

Once in a while I hear a piece of equipment on my own that I've read reviewed. If the reviewer's report on that piece of equipment matches my own perception, I trust him. If it doesn't, I don't. Not that I think he's a liar; it's just that his taste and mine are different.

Same thing with movie critics in the local paper. If I go to a movie on a critic's favorable review and I think the movie stinks, I probably stop reading that critic.

I will certainly grant you that, to my ears and in my system, some things do sound the same, including some wires (e.g. when I replaced RatShack gold with DH Labs). But others don't (e.g. when I replaced DH Labs with Goertz Triode Quartz). They sound different to me. But whether Mike Fremer can distinguish between two amplifiers in a DBT is just not something that interests me. What interests me is if I listen to a speaker he's reviewed and the words he used to describe the sound of that speaker are the same words I would use.

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