Tin Foil Hat Audio

Completely agree with this:

I'm having too much fun with my placebos to quit now!

Placebo effect is a real, documented thing of course, but if it works, it works.  If a doctor prescribed me a medication and said something to the effect of, "now, this medication works at solving your problem for 99% of the population, but we absolutely know that's due purely to the placebo effect of just taking something", it's not like I would reply, "no, doctor, I can't take it because I object to placebo effects on principle."  I'd be taking it in a heartbeat!  (Those of you in the medical field may actually know of some extremely commonly prescribed medications that according to meta-analyses achieve no better results than placebo...)

On the other hand, if a person is not responsive to placebos, they should not be derided as people who can't hear, or people who only care about measurements, or people who only judge by price, etc.

We should all remember that our tastes, hearing, brains, budgets, rooms and gear are all different; and what works for us will not necessarily work for someone else and vice versa.  

On the other hand, if a person is not responsive to placebos, they should not be derided as people who can't hear, or people who only care about measurements, or people who only judge by price, etc.

I agree with this as well.  I think it’s best to avoid telling people what they ought to be hearing, whether it’s on the basis of past experience, observation, hearsay or measurements.  I can only report what *I* hear.  I am a case study of one, and make no claims to generalizability!

  I remember from years past reading an article written by a reviewer who, by some chance had small group of musicians over at his place. They were from Jamaica, and he figured that they might be impressed at how good his system would reproduce their music. Once he started playing the music, they just got up and started dancing. I always wondered whether it mattered so much about the system, at least to them. A different appreciation/perception.

To my, from what I’ve seen it’s more often that people who hear differences get derided, and if someone does say what you mentioned, it’s a response back to those ones deriding them, in order to throw their own medicine back in their face. I’ve often found the ones driving those who hear as too obtuse for that method to have any effect on them. Any one deriding what the other hears or dosnt hear is just a hater. Someone who can’t stand anyone to be on the other side of their views. Maybe they feel like they’re being called liars and take it personally when someone mentions they like x cable, or when they say they don’t feel the need to spend on cables as they don’t feel they make a difference. It’s easy to spot the different types, one kind talks about snake oil, advertisements that speak in toungues ( though I admit some advertising does get a bit thick with their own made up descriptions of their products) and many times measurements are brought up and translated to reach many different conclusions.