RonM;575709 Wrote: > Leon Festinger's concept of cognitive dissonance is also salient here. > When we have commited to something (bought a car, acquired a religious > belief, bought a ton of expensive audio gear and become a > true-believing audiophile) we tend to pay attention to things that > reinforce or support our action or belief. We experience what > Festinger called cognitive dissonance when we encounter information > that tends to cast our choices in a less than positive light -- we'll > read articles praising our swell new car or describing the tenets of > our new religion (whether or not it's the Catholic Church or the Church > of Sound), but will avoid those that lead us in a different direction.
Which is why audiophiles BORROW equipment to listen to before they purchase it, so they have little/no commitment. Honestly, some of you people mention things like this as though "subjectivist audiophiles" could never possibly have considered these things. We have. I personally know a number of audiophiles that are actually practicing research scientists. Despite being highly skeptical in the beginning, they have come to believe that things like cables can make subtle differences in the sound of some systems. I have actually read most of the original ABX papers by David Clark and associates, which appeared in places like JAES. Have you guys? The tests all have serious methodological flaws that severely limit what conclusions can be drawn from their negative results. Severely! And yet these were the tests that largely established support for the point of view (one might even say meme) that almost nobody can hear the differences they think they hear when subjected to double blind conditions. So when somebody tells me they know for a fact that cables cannot sound different, I am going to demand that they provide citations for the studies that establish this as a "fact" (bet they can't). -- ncarver ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ncarver's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=15905 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=81616 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
