[zrav]

The impact of audio hardware quality specifically on the noticeability/ABXability of compression artifacts is greatly exagerated. Going above mid-range speaker setups I have not found them to be more revealing in this specific regard. And of course, as you mentioned, even inexpensive but decent headphones beat very expensive speaker setups for critical listening.

I completely missed the Hydrogenaudio multiformat test in 2014. I wonder how much things progressed since when I participated in the early tests in 2006.