I would challenge any Stereophile or The Absolute Sound reviewer to conduct blind listening tests with two high-end systems that are identical except for something like a power cable and be able to differentiate them with a greater than 50% success rate.
They did that sort of thing years ago. Back in the 1970’s and for part of the late 1980’s they pretty much agreed that blind/double blind listening tests were the “gold standard”. They ran some themselves, published the results all was great until they challenged Carver to a double blind test and couldn’t tell a $400 amp from a $6,000 or $10,000 one. They took a huge reputation hit on that one and as the digital age progressed they failed more and more and published fewer. By the late ‘80’s they had to stop completely or they would have no business or jobs left. The only alternative was to do an about face and start highlighting or simply inventing falsehoods for why DBT not only wasn’t actually the gold standard but was unusable. James Randi not only made the challenge you suggest (with an audio cable, not a power cable) but offered $1m to anyone who could tell the difference. It stood for about 15 years and no one took him up on it. Why did no one even try? Obviously they knew what would happen.
Funny thing is, they don't conduct tests like this. I wonder why.
Now you know.
Everything related to the signal path does matter.
It matters to the extent that if it’s not there then nothing works. No fuse or power cable and it won’t work. For many/most of the parts of the signal chain it doesn’t matter what different part you use as long as it’s the correct specification.
The issue is, does it matter enough to be audible, and if so, enough to be worth what it costs.
Not really. The issue is: Does it make a realistic difference (many/most don’t). Only if the answer is “yes” to this question does the issue become, is it enough to be audible and then, if that’s also a “yes”, is it worth it to an individual?
In other words, they don't make any effort to account for confirmation bias.
Or expectation bias or any other bias unfortunately.
Every audiophile I know listens very hard to a new piece of gear, trying at some level not to like it so that they don't have to spend however many $1000 it costs.
And that’s why they’ll often hear a difference when there isn’t one. It’s a “
new piece of gear”, so that’s a big bias to start with AND they “
listen very hard”. If they listen differently to usual they’ll most likely perceive differently to usual. So it’s hardly surprising if they hear a difference, in fact it would be unusual if they didn’t.
This is NOT confirmation bias; this is simply accepting the joy I feel when I'm listening as real.
How do you know it’s not confirmation bias, what did you do to eliminate that possibility? Maybe you’re right, maybe it’s not confirmation bias, perhaps it’s expectation bias or another bias or just because you listened “very hard”, what did you do to eliminate these possibilities? For that sort of money, I personally would have first done a DBT and if I could tell a difference, I’d have tested to find out what that difference is, what it’s doing to lower the fidelity so much I can actually hear it!
G
