Actually, this is the very definition of conjecture: "I could go buy a meter...." I don't believe your conjecture, and I challenge you to substantiate your claim.



That, by contrast is a fact.

But I think part of the focus of this disagreement hits at the very heart of high-end audio. Do we want something that sounds "pleasant", or do we want something that sounds "accurate"? If the source is of very high quality, then most everyone seems to jump into the accuracy boat. But, as Az points out, esp. in home theater, different mixes have different amounts of bass/surround/etc. which may not be as pleasant as we'd like. And, of course, a meter isn't going to correct for differences in source mixing.

But I think you go too far, Az, when you scream "THERE IS NO TRUE REFERENCE POINT when actually listening to CD's and DVD's." Given a set of listening positions and a weighting of importance among them, you can define a true reference point: maximizing the *accuracy* of your system over those positions in reproducing what's encoded on the disc. Accuracy is a human-independent measure that can be objectively measured (by whatever instrument, human or machine). And that's what an SPL meter is useful for.

If you don't like what's on the disc, and want to tweak it, then, by all means, go ahead. I have no doubt that you can come up with settings for many discs that you would judge to be more pleasant than what an accurate reproduction of the content would require. But many people first want an accurate presentation of what's on the disc before adjusting their controls for the "most pleasant" setting for that disc. And, moreover, many people find the accurately reproduced soundtracks to be very pleasing.