So how much do you think the placebo effect impacts our listening preferences?


My hypothesis is that for ~%97 of us, the more a headphone costs the more we will enjoy the headphone.

My secondary hypothesis is that the more I told consumers a headset cost, the more they would enjoy the phones. i.e. a $30 headphone < $300 headphone < $3,000 headphones <<< $30,000 headphones.

I’m willing to bet that if I put the kph 30i drivers in the focal utopia’s chassis and told participants in this fake study that the phones cost $4k.... Everyone except for the 3%ers would never guess something was up. The remaining 97% would have no clue and report that it was the best set they ever heard.

Then if I gave them the kph30i and explained it was $30. 97% of people would crap on them after hearing the same driver in a different chassis.

My ultimate hypothesis is that build quality and price are the two most important factors in determining if people will enjoy a set of headphones. This how I rationalize the HD8XX getting crap on when only 3 people have heard it and publicly provided their opinion lol. "It’s a cheaper 800s, of course it’s going to sound worse!"

mikedangelo
That is true for the majority of today's equipment and headphones, but when you get to hear the good stuff you can immediately tell the difference and you will hear things like i have never heard that before and i have listened to that over 100 times.
cd318 wrote:
"When it comes to headphones (cables, amps, cd players etc) the sonic differences between them can indeed be shockingly small"


They can also be "shockingly large". Just saying...
I've been making mouthpieces for saxophones going on forty years and if I had the time and energy I could tell you some unbelievable stories of the mind tricks I've played on sax players and top level ones to boot.  It's funny though, I used to do blindfold tests in an effort to enlighten someone to certain things and when proven wrong they'd go into denial mode and insist they were right even after I had just disproved them wrong.  Some people just feel safer paying more.