That ain't how it works exactly though. Marketing departments the world over have successfully convinced a large chunk of the market, not just that measurements don't matter but also that good measurements are a bad sign. That has allowed them to print money in the high end market without needing an actual engineering department. The result is that now, trying to sell an amp based on the fact that it has low distortion (achieved using lots of feedback) is practically suicide. No marketeer would take that job on.
Mind you I get the impression that the AH bunch are quite level-headed compared to the audiophile fringe. I might be preaching to the choir here.
I have worked in consumer electronics for over 45 years- the marketing departments are some of the worst things about it.
The mythology isn't new- about 35 years ago, a regular shopper (he was far too into the high end to actually buy anything from us) came into the first store where I worked and asked if I had Cramolin. I told him that I did, at home. He told me to put it on my AC plugs and I slowly asked "whhhhhyyyyyy?"- he said it cleans the tangs and contacts in the receptacle, lowers the background noise and tightens the bass. I said "Get out", he said "No, really!" and I then said "No, I meant, leave!". This is the predecessor of using hospital-grade receptacles and stupidly expensive power cords, gold-plated fuses and other things that completely ignore the power grid and house wiring. Maybe we should market audio rhinestones for volume controls.
The marketing department licks their finger, checks for wind direction and acts accordingly. They play with words, to make people act on impulses that are based in ignorance but seem plausible to the reader. Audio magazine had a short article called 'The Greening of CDs', referring to using a green magic marker on the edge of the discs and how it makes several improvements. That was the last time I read that rag.
I grew to dislike high end audio fans and that segment of the industry a long time ago and it has only gotten worse. I don't know if you ever worked in retail audio, but that specifications race in the late-'70s/early-'80s was a royal PITA. People who read the audio mags and comprehended none of it would come in, with their brand new copy of the magazines that had specific passages highlighted, to pick our brains and find out if we knew what we were talking about. Where I worked, we had the benefit of a few people who were EEs or on the way to becoming that, so we could ask before proudly taking an erroneous stance on something when we weren't familiar with it. "What's the damping factor?": is something that was far too common when Sansui started showing it. "Is it Direct-coupled?" was another. We didn't sell Sansui, but we sure did repair a lot of it- their R-series was a car crash wrapped in a train wreck, wrapped in a ship wreck.
Speaking of marketing without needing an engineering department, what's your take on cables that have batteries and a little LED? Every EE I have asked has looked at me like I had three heads and a horn coming out of each forehead.
