Where did the the notion that a headphone can “scale” come from and why do we still believe it?

The audiophile community has stopped parroting these myths like "FLAC sounds better than MP3 (320kb/s) and "expensive cables will improve audio quality" but for some reason we are still spreading the misinformation that one must buy a headphone amp otherwise your shiny new headphone will sound like crap.

There's no way to prove with measurements that amp will sound better than listening straight out of a decent laptop. The vast majority of the audiophile community nowadays listen to modern pop and hiphop music which are compressed to death.

There's no reason to tell them to buy an aditional $100-200 amp when most laptops and PC's will drive the vast majority of headphones just fine. I have done blind A/B tests with $50, 100, 200, 500 and $1000 amps and I couldn't tell them apart from my $400 dollar Windows laptop and my Macbook Air.

The queston is, when will people in the audiophile community stop putting so much stock in amps when there's no scientific way to measure their usefulness outside of pure volume?

 

Amir, is that you?