>After viewing the long DBT threat it is clear to me that you are very confident of the frivolity, if I can put it that way, of much of the hi-end, that many pieces of gear are overpriced for what they do, that many buyers fall back on specious claims having committed to expensive gear and so on.

I wouldn't say most, but I would say lots. I see the high end as being composed products that spare no reasaonable expense in the attainment of good sound; those that don't spare the expense, but fall short; and those items that are basically bad jokes on the purchasers.

>And you just didn't just wake up one day with this conviction.

No I didn't just wake up with this conviction. I built the first ABX Comparator, and did the first ABX test hoping to convince my obviously bigoted and tin-eared friends that the best amps sounded a whole lot better than the rest.

>Surely then there exists a significant body of empirical results as well. Scores of comparisons with commercial products, amplifiers (e.g. this Nad amplifier vs. some Krell), preamplifiers, cables, etc.

Not all in one place!

Probably more DBTs have been done during the development of commercial products than evaluation of them by reviewers or users. Those will probably remain proprietary for a long time.

>You see what I have in mind is isolating some pair of items from the list for a test case, a set of cables of fairly recent production would be perfect.

Of all things! Cable tests are the hardest to properly test, and they have the most universally disappointing (i.e., null) results.

>This should be fun as well as stand as a sample of the validity of DBT that should satisfy most rational audiophiles.

I think that DBTs have been discussed enough that most rational and well-informed audiophiles are already convinced of their validity, and the meaning of their outcomes.
;-)