Fahnsen: No-one claims that all amps or CDPs sound the same.
As John has already stated, debunkers have in fact claimed this. In fact, this claim is not uncommon at all.
Fahnsen: The sound preferred by many audiophiles is the sound of harmonic distortion.
In my opinion, this is a naive over simplification.
Fahnsen: Cables don't have components that process the sound. Bad cables and connections might degrade the sound -- but no cable can improve the sound. Very simple actually.
Agreed. However, cables do noticably sound different. Since this is true, it makes perfect sense to buy and try different cables.
Fahnsen: But of course speakers, and their surroundings, is what matters most.They virtually 'make' the sound; besides they're the components with the largest potential for altering frequenzy respons and adding distortion. And sending the sound into a room, they interact with that room's acoustics.
I agree that speakers have the most profound impact on the sound you hear from hifi, but what's your point? No speaker is perfect. Are you suggesting all effort and money be spent on speakers to the total exclusion of the electronics? Once you pick a speaker, again, it makes perfect sense to attempt to improve the electronics as well. Or do you feel you should just buy $100 CDP, a $100 amp, and keep upgrading speakers, pouring all money into speaker upgrades and never touching the electronics, since the speakers are so important? I'd have to disagree. Common sense and experience tells me this would not result in an optimal use of funds versus sound quality.
Fahnsen: It's not so much about what fools are able to hear, as it's about what fools don't know about hearing. If you know only a little about acoustics, you'll know that shifting your position in the chair or even turn your head a little will affect the sound that reaches your ears more than any change in hi-fi components.
Again, you have no point. So we are fools to spend money on the equipment at all? We should instead spend our time perfecting how we hold our head in relation to the speakers? This is just ridiculous. Again, common sense and experience tells me that the brain and hearing are far more complex than your over simplification implies. I really don't think that man in general fully understands how music is processed by the brain and everything that is occurring. I can tell you for a fact that I've found far more musical satisfaction from equipment upgrades, then from tilting my head.
Fahnsen: If you know anything about human perception, you'll know that anything more than a few seconds pause between samples means that you're not comparing actual sound, but your memories of sound.
This is probably true, but again, science does not fully understand how the brain processes music. To be smugly confident that we do understand this is just naive. I've done some reading on this subject myself and I feel confident that, we continue to merely scratch the surface of understanding the human brain.