10,000 Maniacs

A lot of you aren't going to like this post. Its not about Natalie Merchants old band, but the amount of time it is acknowledged it takes to become very proficient in an art or discipline, and that is roughly 10,000 hours. Its by no means definitive, but seems to be surprisingly accurate for many endeavours.
It is certainly true for the art of critical listening of high fidelity reproduction of recorded music.
10,000 hours is about 13 years of 2 hours per day. Very few people get to listen for those sorts of time periods, and if you can only manage an hour a day it will take a quarter of a century to get to the 10K mark.
Just as much a skill, the art of critical listening is an evolutionary process, you cant go from begining in hi-fi and owning your first hi fi to having good analytical skills and the knowledge to listen honestly and illusion-free overnight.
That's the hard part- you might have 20Hz-20KHz hearing , but unless you can seperate objectivity from subjectivity and honestly process what you are hearing into something approaching truthfullness, you are a long way from the ability to critique the reproduction of music.
There are 10,000 maniacs on every audio forum giving their opinion on what is the "best" this and the "best" that. These opinions are pretty much based on how far along the 10,000 hour path they are, and the stages of evolution goes something like this:
Early on the hi fi path is the "loudness" stage- big bass , big treble. The bass is a dead giveaway , 100Hz boom gets mistaken for sub -bass, and more is better. The low damping factor of low feedback or SE tube amps gives a boomy , inarticulate bass that impress's the beginner. If they use subs they tune them into the >50Hz region to add even more bass boom into the mix.
Eventually it wears a bit thin (and it is despite the boom) , and 2-3 thousand hours later they discover "beautiful" music, or at least their interpretation of what it is.
They decide that this is how all music should sound , how all equipment should sound, and death to all who dont hear it the way they do.
The midrange becomes very important, and female vocals have to have a richness and warmth that is euphonic and pleasant.
Very subjective based, and many get to this stage and stay there permanentely, which is good for them, unfortunately many turn into fundamentalists who don't like to see evolution continue , and will turn to the forums to preach their gospel.
Fortunately many do come to realize that it is all subjective, that everyone hears differently, in different environments, and that their is no "best".
But this doesn't stop them from seeking and this is the dangerous and expensive era for the audiophile, with a new piece of equipment every other month.
Eventually this also becomes a bit tiring and our poor audiophile wonders whats next?
He/She reads the forums and sees a zillion opinions about why this class A amp is better than this class D amp, why flac files sound inferior to wav files, why Sabre dac chips sound better or inferior  to 30 year old NOS dac chips.
Again, every opinion is subjective, every opinion is just one persons interpretation, what is the truth?
Unfortunately, in this game it is impossible to completely remove subjectivity from objectivity, just as you cannot declare a glass of wine or a painting better than another, it always comes down to it being simply opinion, it may become a consensus, or acknowledged as the rule, but it will always be open to dissent.
However, up towards the 10,000 hour mark, something clicks and they realize they are listening to a RECORDING, its just a recording of the musical event, its not the actual event itself, but a reproduction of the music played at that point of time, which includes the sound of the equipment used to record it, the ability of the recording engineers to reproduce it as accurately as possible , and the ability of the mastering engineer to accurately transfer the recording to the medium you will ultimately use in your equipment.
You can never hear the original and actual music, the best you can hope for is an ACCURATE reproduction of the music. If you dont like an accurate reproduction and want to use equipment that is "warmer",  then the music you listen to in your home is your interpretation of the event, it is less accurate.  You are in the land of subjectivity, and while you will hear things as you like them to be heard, you will never hear recordings at their very best (and worst) .
Objectivity and accuracy go hand in hand, the very finest and the very worst are recognised by accurate ears, accurate equipment , and most important of all an honest and open mind that can differentiate what a recording actually is, and can hear it as the recording, not as an interpretation that suits your ideal.
The truth, or at best a near truth, is the highest level of hi-fidelity.
It is no coincidence that at the upper echelons of hi-fi gear , accuracy is the key distinguishing factor, realism can only come from accuracy.
Without fail, all the 10,000 hours+ audiophiles I've met desire accurate recordings and equipment, they've heard all the various flavours of equipment, recognise it as colouration  and have the ability to filter or adapt to these colourations in order to hear the recording as it is. Although they may own coloured equipment and systems they strive for accurate equipment above all else.
They can enjoy the sound of a SE tube amp into a high efficiency speaker but know that it is far from accurate . They can listen to to the very latest high technology dac chip , and appreciate that the resolution of it will show up most recordings as less than ideal.
But when a musical event is played with true passion and ability and the recording is faithfully transferred to your accurate equipment, then the true beauty of the performance is revealed, and you are closer to the event.

WAV/FLAC

Recently on a forum the old argument about whether wav files sound better than flac files came up once again.
 My view is that wav files DO sound better than flac, but quantifying the difference is something I can't easily do. It's not as if the bass is tighter and better defined or the treble is airier or that the sound staging is more 3D with better imaging. Wav files just simply sound better, more natural and organic , I don't know why, I just enjoy the sound of wav, all things being equal.
 But the difference is minimal at least, and probably invisible to most listeners. I imagine good equipment and ears with a lot of listening experience would be required to reliably pick the difference, although I suspect it is something that is more intuitive than critically heard. Perhaps we are using some 6th sense as instruments can't seem to detect the difference easily.

 My rating of digital file quality goes something like this:

 (1) DSD native files played back on DSD capable equipment.(No PCM conversion)
( 2) 352Khz wav files, played back on 352khz capable equipment, natively, no down sampling.
 (3) wav files, upsampled with software to 352Khz, played back on 352Khz capable equipment.
 (4) flac files, processed as (3)
 (5) mp3 files, processed as (3)
 (we'll ignore the Mac friendly AIFF,ALAC files for the moment)

 But there is a factor that determines sound quality that has a far greater influence than the type of file, and that is the quality of the recording. A properly recorded and mastered mp3 will sound a hell of a lot better than a poorly recorded DSD. I've had a few audiophiles in my listening room in raptures about the sound, not knowing they were listening to a mp3. 
The majority of my digital files are flac, with a roughly equal amount of DSD,wav and mp3. A few apes and aiff,alac on my Mac system , only rarely used. 
All things being equal, I would purchase digital files as wav files but the difference in sound quality is so minimal it's just not worth the effort to maintain an all wav collection and transferring a a flac or mp3 to wav won't make it sound better.
What I did find interesting about the debate on the forum was that one of the protagonists arguing that wav was superior, uses what I consider an "interesting" system. The system uses tube amps with very low damping factor and when I heard the amps and speakers I was not surprised by poorly defined, booming bass that was more typical of a boom box than an evolved hifi system.
To argue that a type of digital file is better than another when using such an inaccurate system for resolving the difference seems a bit misconstrued to me.