[FlameGrilled]

My point re : pointless, is referring to the ever-obsessive nature of the 'lets invent a test' nature of the way they are testing.

All testing, to some degree, is far from pointless in varying degrees. It's the reasoning behind some it that's kinda grey and lacks a bit of real-world definition.

I mean, and this is what really kicks me about these 'net' tests ... :-

Noone's asking what the walkman/discman users (i.e. those who dont ever, to date, make a move to lossy digital compression) is looking for in the way of quality.

If the people who want to indulge in persistant tests fancy losing their 'obssesive AP wannabes' rep with me, all they gotta do is focus their testing on finding the most practical element of finding good solutions that will both make discman/walkman-only users take some notice..

In doing so, they'll actually de-alienate the geeky nature that mp3 & lossy DA trends follow and if you want to find a perfect cue - look at what Sony did with MD and hence Atrac - that's a real example of making compressed audio idiot proof without making it 'geeky'.

So, if these people who do the testing worked harder to 'de-geek' their ideals of their testing, they'd earn a heck of a lot more respect for their efforts.

I'm still a die-hard who sides with the reluctant borderliners (those borderliners are a mass market who noone's trying to approach.. and we are talking multi-millons off potential customers there) who will eventually go compact DA.. when it suits their ideals of idiot-proof simple and has more than one choice of MD or 'geeksville'.