Paperw8: As you apparently insist on missing my point I suppose there's not much I can do about it, but my original hypothetical to you wasn't about my opinions or perceptions, or even about me in particular. Go back and reread it: I asked how, in your psychological paradigm, you can account for the fact that audiophile behavior doesn't always, or even very often in my experience, conform to your purported stereotype (of being inextricably swayed by factors other than subjective sonic performance).
I'm left to pose the same Socratism that I did earlier in the thread: Namely, which approach -- yours (power cords can't 'work' for a [selective] variety of reasons *other* than actually auditioning some in revealing systems and coming up empty, therefore one can disregard that imperative), or mine (essentially the opposite, i.e., since I can reliably hear them 'work', then a totally explicated formulation for *precisely* why and how they work is distinctly secondary) -- is the more predetermined and possibly prejudicial?
I don't quibble with your subjugate points about value-for-money or questionable advertising practices. (I do however find unconvincing your critique regarding the hypothetical of high-end amplifier manufacturers and power cords.) And I can't even say that I don't sympathize with your position to some degree, since I myself likewise decline to audition the sorts of tweaks that strike *me* as being unrealistically 'magical' or baseless. There's only so much time and resources in life, and each of us has to choose for ourselves what to pursue and what not to.
What I must wonder is, how you would explain it if you came to my house, listened to my system with different power cord substitutions, and heard the correlated sonic effects that I hear? Because I don't see how you could fail to if you have ears on your head. But the happy user of some 'black box' tweak would say the same thing to me, so absent actually doing this test, on (and on!) we go...
