alt Hacker NewsNote: blind testing is not double blind testing. Scientists evolved double blind for a reason: blind testing doesn't remove bias.
Yes, the discussion was "never about analog vs AD". But my point is that I see little point wasting time on one set of artifacts (in the digital realm) that are tiny compared to those introduced in the analog realm. If there's a mouse and an elephant about to enter your home, you focus on the elephant, no?
The big difference, of course, is that "everyone" has convinced themselves that most/all of the analog artifacts, as big as they are, are somehow "tasteful" or "artistic", whereas the digital ones are just "math errors". I don't think is too helpful.
And look, if lots of people could get through double blind tests and still show they can hear aliasing or whatever the digital artifact du jour is, then I'd say "yes, absolutely, we need to be very aware of this and do everything we can to reduce or eliminate it". But as far as I can tell, this just isn't the case.
This is a more philosophical take… And I totally agree with you. I mix at 16/44.1 just for the record. I do not buy into the idea of gold plated connectors or 96 kHz mixing. My point was never about quality - I can hear the difference (the point!), doesn't mean for me personally > 44.1 is "better" or "worse".
To your main point: yes, all artifacts are just our learned, cultural, developed preferences. In the exact same way major/minor thirds were considered dissonant just a few hundred years ago - it's all a learned perception, not an absolute judgment.
I would go even further, doesn't matter whether people perceive aliasing as a major issue, it's no different from the U47 "warmth". You can't afford this, probably, as a software developer in a way, but at the most fundamental level any sound's - or artifact's - judgment is based on our our current diagram of "sounds nice" vs "sounds bad".