An interesting demonstration

@artemus_5 , It is very hard to take Paul Mcgowan seriously. This has nothing to do with the topic which is Poppy's demonstration.

djones, thanks for the link. I have run into him before but have not read him extensively. I will trundle through these articles. I'm sure he is antithetical to the mythology advanced by many audiophiles who insist on taking their own hearing seriously. One should never make a determination after one "trial" of unblinded hearing. The simple truth is that if it looks better it will sound better. If it costs more it will sound better.
Neither cost not looks is a determinant of sound quality. I use to sell cheap Marantz receivers (we got spiffed on these) by blind ABing the customer with expensive Accuphase separates. They could never tell the difference and happily bought the Marantz when they discovered it sounded just as good. 

@mijostyn, In your opinion, did the Marantz and Accuphase separates sound the same?

OK I listened to Poppy. The demo of Stairway to heaven, etc is something I have heard before. I wouldn't  call it mind bending. Someone had to hear the words first. then write those words down so it could be shown on the screen. Is this what you are calling "suggestion" of what we hear? Yes, She is suggesting. But she has  gotten her "suggestions" from someone who first heard the words and wrote them down.

Poppy is no more immune to the phenomenon than any of us. Those words were put to backwards Stairway by Paul Crouch probably before Poppy was born. Who made up the words is not relevant. 

@artemus_5, you can twist things any way you want but you had no idea what was going on until you saw the lyrics. Neither did any one else. Any one can listen over and over again to any song backwards and come up with some plausible lyrics. 

@tomcy6, The speakers we were demonstrating with and the room situation were so poor I can not make a comment as to sound quality. I can say the Accuphase was much better built. But these people were never going to spring for the Accuphase, way too expensive. I was selling the Marantz over other brands I did not get "spiffed" on like Onkyo, Pioneer and Sanyo. Spiffed means we were getting a bonus on top of the usual commission. The owner did this for equipment he wanted to move for whatever reason. These inexpensive receivers were all pretty much the same. Marantz was easy to move because of the name and it looked great. There were plenty of things some of the salesman did that were clearly unethical like demonstrating speakers out of phase to switch the customer. Most of the speakers back then were garbage. I think the little Dynaco A 25s were the best speaker we sold. We did carry Ohm speakers but back then I did not care for them. The owner did not care for carrying large speakers. We carried mostly bookshelf speakers. I was plenty happy to get out of there. Once I got a clientele going I sold equipment only from two High end stores.