elizabeth,
I think you have a general misunderstanding of the implications of what I’ve written.
I simply acknowledge my fallibility, and have no problem doing so. It causes me little concern. Blind testing is just an occasional tool in the toolbox, I’m far from turning everything in to a science experiment and as I said I happily let my criteria loosen whenever I want.
So take cables, the subject of this thread and forum. I can’t remember the last time I gave much thought at all about cables, in terms of being concerned about replacing my cables. The particular AC cable blind test I referenced was probably in the early 2000s, and I haven’t been bothered about AC cables since. Yet, if I had NOT done that blind test (as well as looked in to the controversies about AC cables) I may well be among all those who fret about AC cables for practically every piece of gear they buy. I’ve got two monoblock amps, an integrated tube amp, two preamps, phono stage, DAC, etc. That right there is a lot of AC cables that I may have thought I had to replace in order to realize the heights of my system. Not to mention my home theater gear as well. But I’m spared all that money and research because I have reasons not to think it’s a priority.
The same goes for all my cabling, speaker wire, interconnects etc. Can’t remember the last time I fretted about the sonic qualities of any of my cables. I’m spared all the extra money and time many here spend on cable swapping.
If I get a new piece of gear, I don’t burn mental energy worrying about burn in - "is it sounding right yet? Is it finished burning in?" - like many on this site.
When it came to that recent music server change and I thought I heard an issue, turning to a blind test actually *stopped* me fretting about the sound. If I’d been like many audiophiles I would more likely have presumed my perception was right, that there was something "wrong" with the sound of my new server. And that mindset could easily have sent me in to the den of computer audiophiles who think everything makes a sonic difference, replacing every bit of the chain they can. God knows how much chasing of "solutions" I may have gone through to "fix" the sonic problem my ears "told me" was the case.
But I knew that the first variable I could check out easily enough was my own perception. So, a pal drops over and in a little over 1/2 hour we’ve done some blind testing that completely relieved me of the impression anything was wrong. Done. No more thought at all about it.
So I think you’ve actually got it the wrong way around: it’s often folks who utterly trust their hearing over any objective evidence to the contrary, who seem to fret far more about their system, with every little thing making a sonic difference, constant upgrading of cables, chasing all sorts of tweaks, etc.
Believe me, I can be an obsessive audiophile, but it tends to be when I’m in speaker shopping mode. Much of the other stuff that audiophiles sweat; I don’t.
(BTW, as I have other audiophile pals including a friend who reviews, I still get to hear and play with occasionally various boutique audiophile cables - sometimes when I need some cables I’ll get some spare or cast off audiophile-company cables, or we will check out new cables at their place. But for my system, even though I have some audiophile cables still sprinkled here and there as they were given to me, I don’t fret much about it, so long as I have cables with the basic specs to do the job I need).
On the other hand, you seem to be uncomfortable with the idea of just admitting your own fallibility (in terms of your perception and inferences form what you believe you hear). I wonder why that is? I think it’s pretty liberating to be able to acknowledge "I could be wrong...."
