I read an article about studies into the hypothesis that the brain is always in a state of controlled hallucination (I think that was the theme), and that when listening to music their brain model recognises the importance of detecting the leading transient of a sound, and then filling in some of next information based on the brains 'memory of previous sounds', so in a sense hallucinating and 'making the information up'.
I too thought that this could make some forms of blind tests difficult, especially if they involved rapidly switching from one dac to another (for example), because their 'brain model' could mean that the listener always processed each sound based on their 'legacy memory of previous dacs', leading to the conclusion that both dacs sound the same.
It is true that some listeners do claim that all dacs sound the same.
However how does this brain model cope for the cases where listeners compare listening with and without MScaler - especially where they initially they report that can detect no difference, but after a few weeks of listening with MScaler they report that they can detect a difference, especially if then trying the 'no MScaler option' ?
My hypothesis is that it must mean that the brain can create a new 'legacy memory' now based on using the MScaler, but also that the brain can store multiple 'legacy memories' - the alternative would be that after using a MScaler for a few weeks, and building the new single 'legacy memory', the owner could then sell the MScaler but the 'legacy memory' would cause the 'no MScaler option' to sound identical to the 'MScaler option'.
Overall the more times I read the article, the more 'what if' questions were raised in my mind, that some implementations of blind testing may not be as appropriate for all scenarios as widely believed.
It would be interesting to read if the researchers have developed their brain model further, based on experimental results.
@AxelCloris if this post crosses the line, and is OT, I will move it.