I agree with your points. Being a social scientist by education I love reading the discussions that develop in forums about different opinion based topics like “my speakers are better than yours.” The shear level of emotion and rationalization with which many people post about their various AV purchases is a good anecdotal indication of just how subjective this hobby is.

A blind test is the only way IMO to make a GTG worthwhile. Knowing which/who’s speaker is playing brings so many social psychological factors into play it will almost always make any conclusions about relative quality worthless. Very few people, I mean a miniscule number, can withstand the norming effect of social pressure, and most consider those people to be anti-social.

3M80 2M22 6QS8 2M2 1EP500 Sony BDP-S590 Panny-7000 Onkyo-3007 Carada-134 Xbox Buttkicker AS-EQ1