[atoav]

I mean human hearing is well known by now. We have a pretty good understanding what makes up certain sounds. Yet, given the nature of the subject on the fringes of perception people start to develope a lot of fantasy, like a child walking through the dark woods seeing monsters and mysterious creatures everywhere. You can surely measure everything, but you also have to do it.

Where audio stuff gets the hardest (and what makes the most impact) is room acoustics and the conversion from and to sound waves (so: microphones and speakers and their position within said rooms).

The power amplifiers, preamps etc. can then either be adequate or inadequate to drive those speakers or amplify those microphones neutrally. If you want everything else than high fidelity (e.g. the subtle crossover distortion and warm sound of a class AB tube amplifier) this is a different thing, but don't call it high fidelity.