Well said. Completely agree.
Same. My first two blinds I ever hosted(had attended a couple before) were:
- Infinity Beta 20 with grills on vs grills off
- Nord Hypex Amp vs Emotiva XPA-3 vs Yamaha AVR
And in both of those blinds, nobody heard any difference between anything. In both cases, it was apparent from the very first switch that this was going to be
way more difficult than I thought going in. We didn't do ABX, as the assumption going in (based on everything we'd read/seen) was that there would be obvious "night and day" differences. Luckily we had a decent enough sample size to show that our "preferences" were just random.
I'm pretty sure I could pass the first one now with the better understanding I have (I know to focus only on that top octave-ish).
Based on the AVR measurements we've seen, I'm guessing someone with specific distortion training could likely pass the second, but I'm fairly positive I still couldn't. Even if I thought I could, I'm confident that the differences would be small enough for me to not care(enough to spend money).
That second blind completely shifted me towards pretty much only spending money on speakers. I can afford much better speakers when I don't have to have amps, pre-amps, and DACs that match the price of the speakers
. I started my audiophile journey over on the Audioholics forums, so luckily I never believed in cables.
Even speaker blinds are humbling to me. Despite some pretty big price differences between some of the speakers I've tested, I'm still never close to 100% sure of my preferences. Speakers definitely sound different, but IMO we (audiophiles) even overstate those differences.