Quote Originally Posted by Marco View Post
LOL!!

No disrespect, Tim, but I couldn't give a monkey's bollocks what "a statistically significant sample of civilians/audiophiles/recording engineers" think. I trust my own ears, and those of people whose opinions I respect, nothing else matters to me - and so it will always be...

Oh, and these days I rarely, if ever, use magazines to assess the performance standards of equipment, so I'm pretty unconcerned how they carry out their tests. There are plenty of other things which I find hi-fi magazines useful for, though.

Marco.
No disrespect taken and no offense meant, Marco, but the simple truth is that if a given tweak/component/difference cannot be heard often enough by a sufficiently large set of humans with normal hearing to exceed a margin for error (statistical sample), yet you still think you hear it, your ears are not to be trusted. I'm not saying that would happen, but it's really that simple. If you can manage to hear everything for yourself, fine. If not, a bit of AB/X testing might make those audiophile magazines good for something more than toilet paper again.

Tim