Yes, it is called a degree in electroacoustic engineering.
I was rather referring to hobbyists who can afford an AP or Klippel and publish their measurements without understanding how they translate to audibility, hence self-declared.
Obviously, people making a living out of reviewing hi-fi gear on Youtube, were not meant when I talked about ´mainly a hobby´ and ´most people do it for fun´, but rather the addressees of such videos who either believe the stuff or do not.
I agree that people expressing such opinion professionally should ideally be following journalistic standards of verifying their claims previous to publishing them. In the real world, the number of publishers meeting such standards is rather low. And for common viewers, it is very difficult to differentiate what is reasonable or not, partly because the opposite fraction of self-declared objectivists acts as illogical, dogmatic and contradictory at the same time. Publishing jitter measurements claiming there is an audible difference between streaming bridge and CD transport does sound as credible as publishing SINAD measurements far from audibility thresholds claiming to express a difference in sound quality between DACs.
´take my money from me´ would implicate that you are prone to taken an informed decision of buying stuff which from rational point of view would be useless or not making a difference in quality, would it not? I mean, for each and every of these questions, an answer and explanation from objective point is just one google search away, and a lot has been written about blind testing, audibility threshold and how digital audio works. It is difficult not to stumble on the objective point when reading or listening about that. In case of CD transport vs. streaming bridge, not even much of technical understanding is needed to know that bits are bits, just some common sense.
That said, my conclusion would be that people who buy expensive stuff which others regard to be useless, do this in full awareness of its status. This has not always been the case. Before internet appeared, some magazines, dealers and distributors had some kind of monopol on forming the ´public´ opinion, with almost no-one being able to find contrary opinion or solid information. In this situation, like 25 years ago, I would understand your fury and the will to save people from their own delusions.
The problem here is that sound quality is subjective and people do not ask for their opinion to be fact-checked. Not much difference to the opposite fraction, I would say, which makes any common understanding increasingly unlikely. I would be satisfied if a situation could be achieved in which the extreme fractions are not disparaging each other anymore, which in my understanding is ironically damaging the reputation of the common passion of enjoying music as well.
cables and power had passed through a directional audiophile fuse or not. Perception is something completely different… Nevertheless, people who perceive that Napoleon talks to them and tells them to do things, no matter how sincere they are in their belief, are hauled off to asylums.