For me, my decision to purchase the blue outlet was not based upon the claims of Synergistic Research or science either. That’s me - I’m not all about measurements, etc. I tend to look for commonalities in user reviews. When I finally purchase something, it is my own experience and opinion, however, that will trump all others. And, it’s whether it works in my system or not. It could work fine in someone else’s system and not in mine and the reverse is probably true as well.
I’m also not looking for an outlet to specifically change the tonality of my system. For me, it needs to make it sound subjectively (to me) better. In the end, that could be detail, transparency, and it could possibly be tonality too. The point is that I’m not looking for anything in particular going in, just wanting a better result one way or another.
The mention of expectation bias is probably true for some folks. However, I don’t think it applies to everyone when evaluating audio/video products. I’m too picky and too concerned about the money I spend to have the expectation bias. In fact, my bias often goes the other way - the product is going to have to prove itself, because I can’t believe it is that good. The blue outlet, for example, has been up and down for me over the last week or two. Once it settles in, I’ll make up my mind on it.
Dave
