WHY IS THERE SO MUCH HATE FOR THE HIGH END GEAR ON AUDIO GEAR?

@jacobsdad2000  , I don't know if I would describe it as the "Wild West", but this identical discussion has reared it's ugly head there and I'd bet a lot of money with one of the original participants.

I left after I unintentionally offended or insulted the moderator.  He had a hissy fit and called me a dick and a liar.  I tried to aplologize for unintentionally insulting or offending him and he called me a liar a second time and then he deleted my response to that.

The Golden Ears, with a Golden System, in a Golden Room couldn't hear a difference:

https://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_4/feature-article-blind-test-power-cords-12-2004.html

Yes, folks can accessorize all they want, have at er', pretty stuff is cool, but as Paul Simon sings, "faith ~ faith is an island in the setting sun, but truth ~ truth is the bottom line".

A few years back, I hosted a blind audition with a decent setup - 4 year old Maggie 1.7QR / Roksan amplification / top-line model Pioneer Elite SADC source / Mobile Fidelity master recordings, in a nice listening room, with "Golden Ear'd" folks, including symphony orchestra members and a few others with "Golden Ear" stereo systems and audio addictions like ours...

No one, and I mean no one ~ was able to hear the difference between robust, $350 silver wire interconnects (which many online were raving about) vs. absolute el-cheepo / "totally flimsy junk that came free with a junk VCR from the 1980's" RCA interconnects.

All of the hardware, minus the speakers of course, were located in an adjacent room, with thick, 12 ft. fancy speaker cables running under the door into the listening area - which was an ideal setup for this evaluation, as requests could be made and followed without anyone seeing each other or what was going on.

I took the evaluation to another level after our blind audition sessions were complete and ran a series of specifically requested tracks / "known cable" requests for the listeners - - but without actually changing the cables back and forth when that was requested.

Inevitably, the listeners "heard all manner of difference between the cables" as I supposedly swapped them back and forth on demand... except that I never changed the cables at all.  They were listening to the same el-cheepos all along, but they still 'heard' all kinds of "depth", "warmth", "air" and "soundstage" when they thought that they were listening through the expensive / silver cables - and they were convinced that none of this existed when they thought that they were listening to the cheap / junk cables...

Placebo effects are scientifically valid.  Expensive cables, unfortunately, are not...

Now, I'm not here to argue with every other Golden Ear that wants to chip in, because, I've heard their positions, justifications and breathless refrains of "even my wife could hear the difference right away when she walked into the room" all before, 101 times... (more actually).

Until someone can show me that they can "hear the difference" between cables -- when they cannot see which cable is in place - - then I call BS on it.

Over and out.

Nice description of a parlor trick. It's a sad commentary that people take it upon themselves to deceive others and at the same time, conduct ABX tests under their conditions and not the way Harmon, Toole, Barton and the other real experts did it back in the day. They just use their terms and phrases and twist things.

Barton spoke of how frustrating it was to do the tests as what they supposed was incorrect from the beginning. Test subjects valuations were all over the map with the first half hour of testing. Turns out they were listening to the room and not the devices under test (being an unfamiliar room). Having them acclimatize their hearing to the room took another 1/2 hour of rest before proceeding. Nothing was done on the fly, in short bursts of time. It was 1/2 hour listening, 1/2 hour rest, and so on. 

Then and only then did the results start to gel, to get a consensus. The test subjects were gaining much more accuracy and could pick out which speaker and which sound corresponded to it and whether they preferred it or not. After it was over, they had a pretty good understanding of what the general public preferred.

Did you conduct your tests in such a manner? From what you described, I think not. You just set them up for a fall that any hack street magician can do and has done since the beginning of time. Yes, the power of suggestion is strong but when used as a weapon, can easily deceive and/or disorient someone. It doesn't mean they can't hear things they prefer as that takes time (the thing you deprived them of).

All the best,
Nonoise

I once took a group of so called audiophiles and gouged their eyes out so that they had no visual reference to rely on, and then I led them around what they thought were a labyrinth of rooms and told them that some of the rooms had acoustic panels installed and some had none.  In reality I was just leading them around in a circle in my two car garage, but you should have heard those suckers rave about how good a JVC surround sound receiver hooked with lamp cord to a pair of JBLs from Crutchfield sounded when they thought that they were in a treated room.

Oh, and I conduct tests such as these all the time.  It's really no big deal.