Preface: I consider myself an audiophile, but keep reading before you judge. I completely, wholeheartedly agree with the original article and the science behind

Preface: I consider myself an audiophile, but keep reading before you judge. I completely, wholeheartedly agree with the original article and the science behind it. There's no question that our hearing just isn't good enough to discern the minute differences between sound of sufficient quality (which is well defined in the Xiph article). However, all I'll say is, it's very different to hear or feel a difference, than to prove it 100% without any doubt in the exacting conditions of an ABX test. You behave differently and aim your listening at different things in the special case of critical testing, than when normally listening. You have to know and respect this to make good arguments against hardcore audiophiles. Only once you give credence to the possibility can you bring on the real science: that the true bandwidth of the ear and the nyquist theorem truly does mean that any signal within our range of hearing can be encoded perfectly in double the sampling frequency and some 65 thousand steps—assuming an ideal decoding, of course, which means, yes, you should respect the idea of DAC design. The world is full of idiots who are easily parted with their money. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Pursue good quality audio equipment, to a point, because damn, it is enjoyable.