The issue with these other contributing factors is that they fade away over time, leaving you with just the sound. Subjectivists audiophiles seem to always be changing gear and tweaking it with this and that. This factor may be behind that. Improper evaluation easily leads one to think many things are effective in improving audio when in reality they do nothing in that regard. Once that faulty evaluation is done, then that effect wears off leading one with nothing.
That strikes me as a reasonable hypothesis. And it would seem to make sense of some of the audiophile merry-go-round for some portion of subjectivitists.
That said, it doesn't account for the many subjectivist audiophiles who hold on to gear for long periods of time. And even many "objectivist" members here no doubt have gone through some different equipment over their many years in audio. You yourself clearly like playing with different gear, to the degree you've created a web site devoted to measuring and listening to all sorts of new and old components. That's an itch even plenty of subjectivist audiophiles aren't scratching to that degree. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
(And I'm very appreciative of your work!)
My attachment to my tube amps may or may not be due to extra-audio sources of bias. But I've been very happy with the amps for 20 years with no plans to change them.
I do play with lots of speakers, because speakers sound different, and I enjoy those differences. I can pretty much guarantee you that buying a Revel speaker would not change this: I've auditioned Revel speakers, admired them, but still enjoyed the different presentation of other speakers as well.
And it's an interesting question what actually amounts to a "faulty evaluation" for the consumer. I certainly agree evaluations can be faulty in the inferences drawn by a consumer, of the sort:
"I perceived a sonic difference between these DACS, THEREFORE the sound objectively changed between those DACS."
But I think it gets a little stickier in the bigger picture in terms of the mix of bias factors and evaluation, and I keep thinking more of speakers. It's one thing to say
"blind testing of speakers have shown the type of sound people will prefer once they don't know which speaker is playing." It's more of a leap from those results to claims about long term satisfaction for a consumer. Does all the blind testing of speakers predict that people won't find long term satisfaction from speakers that don't measure like a Revel? Obviously not, as a great many consumers, audiophiles included, have had long term satisfaction from speaker-designs all over the map. You've got life-long devotees to Quads, Maggies, Horn designs, Omnis, time/phase coherence, narrow dispersion, wide dispersion designs, you name it. So in what sense do we say the sighted auditions that led to people finding a speaker that gave them long term satisfaction was "faulty?" Faulty yes if the aim is strictly the scientific claims about what precisely we can weed out as audible. But faulty in terms of the actual consumer behaviour that led to being very happy with their speakers for years? Not sure how that would work.
I get the sense that some people think I"m going more against the grain here than I actually am. I can't think of an actual objective claim I'd make that would conflict with what anyone else would accept here. I'm just of a philosophical bent and tend to seek conceptual clarity where I can, so I needle concepts and assumptions/statements to tease out the issues. Maybe to an annoying degree sometimes.