I love threads like this, because I get to drag out my list of pity quotes and comments regarding audiophools and the great debate between objectivists and subjectivists. First some general quotes:
The first principle of scientific inquiry is that you must not fool yourself. And that you are the easiest person to fool. – Richard Feynman
This is America. Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts. – Daniel Patrick Moynehan
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is. – Jan L.A. Van De Snepscheut
Two longer quotes from Floyd E. Toole directly related to this question:
"Knowledge of the products that are being evaluated by subjective testing is generally understood to be a powerful source of psychological bias. In scientific tests of many kinds of human perception, even wine tasting, considerable effort is expended to hide the identity of what is being subjectively evaluated. In audio, though, things are more relaxed, and people, who are otherwise serious, persist in the belief that they are immune to the influence of such factors as price, size, brand name, etc. In some of these so-called
great debate issues, such as whether amplifiers, wires, and the like have an audible effect, there are those who claim that disguising a product’s identity actually prevents listeners from hearing differences that are in the range of extremely small to inaudible. That debate shows no signs of slowing down."
"A wide spread belief among audio professionals is that they are immune to the influences of brand, price, appearance, and so on. They persist is conducting listening evaluations with the contending products in full view. This applies to persons in the recording industry, audio journalists/reviewers, and loudspeaker engineers. As this is being written, the 45th anniversary issue of
Stereophile magazine (November 2007) arrived. In John Atkinson’s editorial, he interviewed J. Gordon Holt, the man who created the magazine. Holt commented as follows:
Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel."
And finally, one more quote for those who insist on the audible benefits of using high priced boutique audio cables:
No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. – H.L. Menken
Often shortened into:
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
