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OR, it goes something like this (and speaking to your "approach to learning and understanding the technology behind a product is more important"): Stereophile and most all of the trade publications (aka "audiophile press") are not normally balanced and critical - instead, they are trade publications and thus there to support and promote the trade. This is one of the reasons that reviews are overwhelmingly positive, and no real comparisons are ever done. They relentless promote the "subjective" side because it is open ended, and allows the status quo method of subjective promotion, and a sort of cuckold objectivism when the appearance of it are necessary/helpful. Yes, MQA/Bob S is a "well-known friend" but then so is everybody else in a small niche industry. The subjective "friendly" promotion of MQA was just a bridge too far, but is in fact the normal way of things. They "ignore" the pulling of the curtain because it often (most of the time really) works and their place in the industry remains the same. Complaints of civility are in the main a tactic to FUD the consumer.

Disingenuousness, often (but not always) combined with simple technical ignorance, is at the heart of audio confidence game. This sustained "civility" critique is part of that, even if everyone involved does not understand this. Beyond it just being "rude" it is first and foremost a defense of the status quo. What's up with the silent deleting of posts @The Computer Audiophile? Or should we be asking @austinpop?

Sure, but the difference is that you would not then take your "qualifications" and pronounce something like: "By all appearances, the MQA revolution is poised to do for the music industry what the latest Star Wars blockbuster is doing for movies. MQA may not be the final frontier, but it is scrubbing clean decades worth of digital files beset with temporal blur (timing errors) and quantization distortion and computational-induced noise."

Not really a proper answer to your question but I like how DAP's of both "value" and "high end" became widely available. They traded the mp3 for 16/44 or >, and combine the digital/analogue into one product. Throw in the fact that at the same time a wider variety of value + high fidelity HP's became available at the same time, and you have market "revolution" instead of just "evolution"...

As the @The Computer Audiophilepointed out multiple times if the labels had chosen to release only in MQA, then it would have been successful. Were there efforts "half-assed" due to their own internal circumstances/incompetence, or did they assess that the market push back would have been too much?

I disagree 😎. Audio has a "tragedy of the commons" problem. A runaway subjectivism is not "harmless" and it is not contained to this or that thread, publication, or niche. The Old Guard feeds and is feed by this kind of subjectivism and it is very much part of the "establishment" (particularly the trade publication/review industry) - it all is very strongly correlated. This is the "environment" and ecosystem that enables frauds like MQA to find traction in the first place. Not that this is going to change any time soon (though it is changing with the increasing importance of consumer forums/communication, etc.), but I when assessing MQA and the like I believe it behooves us to be honest about these things.

I know, another name for microdetail...it's audio so everyone has an angle I suppose.

That's exactly what he did!! Bob asserted: A: that when MQA is there in the middle of the recording/mixing/mastering, that this in-of-itself allow's MQA to be the "authenticator" and a real "Master" is thus created B: usual marketing speak (actually, it's so untrue it's a con game) about 'filtering', 'strong support', etc. Both of these assertions are factually untrue and have been "proven" with reason over and over again on this thread and elsewhere to be untrue. Bob is speaking pure fantasy. Fantasy is the technical term for what he is saying. Yet, you not only demand us to refute these assertions for the 1 millionth time, but you claim if we don't spoon feed this to you yet again we are the ones being unreasonable and uncivil. On the contrary Mr. Quint, YOU are the uncivil one, the unreasonable one in this thread.

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/audio-terminology-subjective-terms-used-on-superbaf.3400/ SBAF as a forum is not everyones cup of tea, but they consciously work at getting this language/descriptive aspect of audio reviews consistent. Not only this, at least some of the regulars are more or less successful at practicing it.

What would be civil is for you Mr. Quint to admit the failure of you and your publication (and your industry) to get anything right about MQA.

An assessment some will say is glass half empty: Two threads were started on the same day at AS (then CA): https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/30381-mqa-is-vaporware and https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/ For all the good the first has done and will continue to do, the latter has more views and shows us that the Old Guard status quo still has the majority right where they want them.

TLDR answer: I am not exactly sure I have found folks who do reviews that have an "objective" subjectivity - they use language consistently and they have enough consistency in what they hear to use comparative/descriptive language such that I know what they mean when they say "this transducer is 'warm' but has greater 'detail/transparency' than this other transducer". @JoshM, @firedog, and to a lesser extent @The Computer Audiophilehere for example are examples of folks I have been able to correlate my experience with and understand what they mean. Tyll Hertsens of Inner Fidelity (now retired) was part of the way there, but for some reason at times he would deviate (in other words, a handful of his reviews did not seem consistent with the majority to my ears). There are some folks over at SBAF whom are consistent, and SBAF consciously promotes this consistency and use of language, but then there are some folks over there whom seem to deviate as well. I have noticed that those who do this, or even just try to do this, are not "radical" subjectivists nor are they "radical" objectivists. They to a person seem to have a balance and realism when it comes to electronics and engineering (and are able to admit voodoo when they see it), yet are also able to admit that gross measurements such as THD+N is not the sum total of the differences between equipment...

Keeping it on track, what @kimo gets right is that he starts in the right place: language A useful subjectivism and review based hobby will have a common language - words will mean something, and that meaning will be transferable to others: when you say "transparent" or "warm" others will know what you mean and how it relates to their (subjective) preferences/expectations. A common language would even get us a kind of "honesty control" via a crowd source methodology. For example, when @Kimo claims he can hear the sound of "metal tweeters" (and thus the materials a transducer has imparts a "sound" to the waveform) others who don't have an expectation around this could report their subjective impressions in a common and repeatable language, and we could then correlate (based on multiple impressions) rather the material of transducers really does impart a "sound" to the waveform.

Rather than let this thread get sidetracked by the Radical Subjectivists, I hope the OP and others will keep it on track. What the OP, Kimo, and Archi and others are pointing to is a rational and realistic subjectivism and a sensible balance between the objective and subjective aspects of audio. It is here that the hobby bears fruit and it is here that Radical Subjectivists of all sorts, rather the aggressive sort or the seeming "innocuous" such as @joelhaderail useful discussion with their insistence on an open-ended anything goes voodoo hobby/industry.

Yes they do disagree, but on what basis? Radical subjectivism mostly, which is just open ended anything goes free for all. The sound of digital communications rests on this radical subjectivism and not on what we know about the math and engineering of digital communications. Beyond The Big Crazy however there is a real subjectivism, a real beauty, and a real place for audio to be about audio and not about your or anyone else's inner psychological needs for a free for all "I said it, and you can't disprove it"...