Is anyone willing to entertain the idea

I have a large collection of mostly vintage amps, preamps and tuners. All have been completely dissambled, updated and restored to better than factory new. For instance I'm lucky to have an industrial pc board washer and a paint shop to put automotive finishes on my gear. I regularly swap components back and forth and the differences in sound quality are dramatic in some cases and barely audible in others. Minor bias adjustments have a huge impact on whether an amp sounds slightly bright or warm. I have yet to find an original, older amp (i.e. broken in) that had the correct bias setting either to factory spec. or set for lowest distortion. I have never been able to hear a difference between cables and feel certain that impedance and component matching have the biggest effect on why components sound different in different systems. As with almost everything else in life, maybe yes maybe no, depending upon many factors. Psycology definitely is a factor, as is the state of your sinuses and barometric pressure.

Many manufacturers seem to agree with you. Else they would set up valid 3rd party double blind tests, squelch the naysayers, and increase their sales volume significantly. I guess it is also possible that they avoid validation because they do not want to have to pay more income tax.

one thing for sure....hi end audio is the 'wild west' of industries. a 'lawless' frontier where anyone can lay claim to anything. if it was regulated like other industries everyone would clean up their act(and be factual) real fast

"hi end audio is the 'wild west' of industries" ... " if it was regulated like other industries"

What a ludicrous statement. Hi end audio is about luxury goods. Same as designer clothing, perfume, haute cuisine. We could all live happy, content lives without ever owning any of it. It's discretionary.

Nobody is forced to buy any of this stuff, and I'd really rather the government concentrated on the important things in life, like education, healthcare, environmental policing, and resisting the temptation to remake the rest of the world in the image of the US.

I'm more worried about "not remembering right" than I am about "hearing wrong" (Musicslug alluded to that). There are subtle or stark differences in many components and even from one album (cd or vinyl) to another. I hear differences all the time. The problem for me is really feeling totally confident about my reference point. It helps to have an intimate knowledge of selected recordings, but still ...

Like the song says: Don't worry, be happy. Enjoy the differences or curse them, the key to this game is enjoying the music, preferably with someone close.

P.S. Since this is all about what is sent to the ears and then how the brain interprets it, don't discount mood, colds, aging, even food reactions (e.g., salt leads to more water retention) -- all that can alter how you perceive the music. Throw in all the extraneous stuff like differences in power integrity and humidity and things really go nuts. Throw in things like discovery and learning (we are all on a journey) and things are really never the same over time. Differences are all tied to a reference point and that keeps changing over time even when no componenets are changed at all.