No, on the contrary! Sorry for my ambiguous writing. Indeed double-blind is the only way to go.
What I meant is that there is a sizeable chunk of the audiophile industry (a certain press, electronics brands, stores and even studios themselves) that conveniently avoids any and all scientific testing, and promotes typical snake-oil "features" and "specs". Quite sadly for their abused customers.
One of the worst trends in my opinion was faking technical format quality by using different masters on each — with the shitty master on CD/MP3 and the good one, more dynamic, on DVD/SACD/vinyl etc. The latter always sounded better simply because it wasn't the same source!
In such matters, I guess we can trust Spotify based on their claims, and anecdotally I tend to believe them.
