Bad news for audiophiles?

Price sometimes dictates value and performance. But not always. I have owned preamps retailing for upwards of 8K and none of them have sounded as good as the passive LDR that I paid 900.00 for. I would gladly replace it if something could beat it. I patiently await that day.

Shakey

Viridian, I liked your statement the best! Thanks for the laughs.

Wine and audio are drugs. Where did that money go?

If you THINK something is better, it's actually better…perception is personal and 100% accurate although utterly and generally inaccurate by nature. My hifi rig, although not the most expensive or universally well regarded per se, was very successfully assembled using personal taste…who knew?

It would be interesting to see the same study conducted on expert wine tasters. And to take the question even further, what would happen if these experts were told the prices, but THEN told that in some cases the lower priced wine was preferred by a majority of their fellow expert wine tasters? Would this color their thinking and alter the measured duration of pleasure center activation back in the OTHER direction?

As an audiophile, I try to look for high performance to price ratio. But the result of the experiment detailed above is something to keep in mind when deciding on purchases.