I respect everyone's opinions here, especially people who have far more experience than I have and whom have made valid criticisms in this post, but I personally feel that this thread has been skewed in the wrong direction and we have lost sight of the original idea which was simply about hearing samples for our listening enjoyment. Getting lost in the semantics of bit resolution is fine in order to prove to each other how much more "right" our knowledge is from a technical perspective, but I would rather just listen to the sounds that people get purely because I like listening to stuff. It really is that simple in my mind. I get tired of people dismissing the idea because its apparently so pointless. Is stimuli only important if it is measurable and technically correct? I absolutely take the point that a number of variables can affect a comparison, but this may not just be a comparison only. I had thought that part of the responses here on this thread and on this board were often about trusting your ears regardless of what other sounds are referenced to. So just because it is not a definitive comparison and just because it isn't reliable doesn't mean I cant simply enjoy listening to samples people post, whether the sounds I decide I am liking have come exclusively from their gear, their recording techniques, settings on their gear or what they have eaten for breakfast on the morning of the recording.
In fact it only becomes a problem and is only "pointless" if I rely upon what I am hearing in the comparison to then form an opinion on which gear is better. I accept that if this happens, then, and only then, was the shootout meaningless because I have not considered a number of issues and my naivety is forming opinions on wider technical variables I may be obtuse to.
I am trying to make this point - and perhaps it's me that is misguided or wrong - but I don't see how posting samples is so meaningless and stupid if its about hearing what people come up with and accepting that it's not supposed to be about evaluating or comparing gear exclusively, because it simply isn't! Stating how meaningless a comparison is because the comparison has too many factors involved ( settings people use, differing sounds of vintage original units, etc) seems to only skew this thread back to the same predicament of ripping apart scientific data and forgetting that some members may just like to hear sounds people come up with and nothing more. I sight my previous example of "flavour". Its nice to hear what flavour's peoples gear comes up with period.
Why is there an assumption that other peoples opinions will affect mine or anyone else's? Isn't one of the endemic things about samples the fact that we can listen to what we hear without needing people to uses words to describe things? - e.g. If someone says an 1176 is flabby on bass I might be swayed by their view. But with a sample I might like what I am hearing whether it is called an 1176, Beringer toy or whatever.
This post isn't meant to be me behaving like a baby, but I just feel that often those of us who like technical stuff (and that's why we are here because we all like talking ohms, farads and volts) often cannot enjoy things unless it has technical validation attached to it. Because something can't be measured adequately doesn't make it meaningless.
