VTL 300B monoblocks (
https://www.stereophile.com/content/blind-listening-page-2)
WSJ (Lee Gomes, re Home Entertainment Show)
"
Portals became an official exhibitor at T.H.E. Show last week. I set up a room with two sound systems, identical except for one component. Everything except the speakers was hidden behind screens. (A shout-out to Totem Acoustics for the Forest speakers loan and to Magnum Dynalab for the MD-308 amps. They all sounded sensational.)
With the same music playing on both, participants used a remote control to switch between the two, and then tell me which sounded better.
One of the tests compared a high-quality MP3 file from an iPod with a CD on a $3,000 player. Three-quarters of the 24 people taking this test preferred the CD.
That was no surprise. However, when I played .wav files on the iPod -- these are digital but uncompressed files; I was connecting the headphone jack to the amplifier -- 52% of the 21 who took this test preferred the iPod.
That made me smile, not because snooty audiophiles got the "wrong" answer, but because it suggests great sound can come from popular, cheap gear.
I also tested speaker cables, which are controversial even among audiophiles. Some spend tens of thousands of dollars on cabling, while others consider it an absurd waste of money.
Using two identical CD players, I tested a $2,000, eight-foot pair of Sigma Retro Gold cables from Monster Cable, which are as thick as your thumb, against 14-gauge, hardware-store speaker cable. Many audiophiles say they are equally good. I couldn't hear a difference and was a wee bit suspicious that anyone else could. But of the 39 people who took this test, 61% said they preferred the expensive cable.
That may not be much of a margin for two products with such drastically different prices, but I was struck by how the best-informed people at the show -- like John Atkinson and Michael Fremer of Stereophile Magazine -- easily picked the expensive cable."