Mark DeBellis wrote:
Exactamundo. The research may have not been intended to answer
certain questions, so it can't be looked to for definitive answers
about them.

But the research was intended to answer exactly the questions you are
asking. If you want to know how to determine whether two things sound
different, there are certain tests that are known to be reliable for
doing this. The only reason you are arguing this is that you don't like
what those tests tell you. I'm sorry we can't rearrange the laws of the
physical universe to your wishes, but we can't.

And it would be circular to argue that those questions
don't matter because everything that's relevant has already been
treated by science.

But look, whatever anyone thinks of my original question or subsequent
meanderings, I think it is apparent that there is a need to explain
better, to non-experts like me, how audio tests work, in the sense of
what they demonstrate and how they demonstrate it, what their logic
and rationale are, what the structure of the reasoning is that leads
from data to conclusions.

You can't understand any of this unless you have a decent grasp of the
basics of psychoacoustics and the physics of sound, which your recent
posts indicate that you do not have. So the very first thing you should
do is pick up a textbook or two actually read the things. Then you'll
be able to pose informed questions, instead of throwing up uninformed
speculation.

I started with what seemed to me a prima
facie problem about the SACD/CD test I undertook.

Yeah, it didn't give you the result you wanted.

It seemed to me
there was a reason to think that the outcome of that particular test
fails to demonstrate that there is no difference between what I hear
in SACD and what I hear in CD (and hence that there is no sonic
advantage to SACD).

NO test can demonstrate that there is no difference. Any such test has
one of two possible outcomes:
1) it can demonstrate that there IS a difference;
2) it can fail to determine whether there is or is not a difference.

Of course, if you keep getting result #2, that should tell you
something.

(This, by the way, is another very basic concept which you have not yet
grasped. I don't point this out to belittle you, but to indicate
further that your lack of background knowledge is hindering your
ability to understand what people are saying to you. So please take my
advice and read up a little.)

If someone wants to tell me that the test does
demonstrate that, then I would be interested to know why what I think
is a reason, an obstacle, is not in fact a good reason.

I believe several people explained why your reasoning was faulty.
Rather than engage them, you've simply persisted in posting the same
question over and over again.

My own
assessment of this is that I performed the wrong kind of test, and
this is worth pointing out because it is very easy to assume that the
test does demonstrate said conclusion, since it is very easy not to
notice the difference between that test and other, better tests.
There is an initial plausibility to the idea that the failure to
identify SACD vs. CD means that one can't sound better than the other.
But I think that plausibility is illusory and betrays a lack of
clarity, from which I was certainly not myself immune, about what the
test really demonstrates and why.

The lack of clarity is entirely yours. I've suggested a remedy.

bob