This article speaks to the problem all listeners confront each time they
sit down to "evaluate" a bit of audio gear, and why when perception is
restricted to listening alone percieved differences disappear.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-wbb060905.php

" It seems when learning to see things that are there, we also learn to
see things that aren't.

"It's a manifestation of overlearning," says Watanabe, "such as when
we find a man's face on Mars' surface or in a forest or on a cloud.


snip

" The participants, the team concluded, had developed a perceptual bias
-- they had learned to see the stimuli even when they were not there.
"This perceptual bias," writes the team, "is an important
demonstration of how perceptual learning can indeed have a cost. Adult
sensory plasticity can be dangerous not only because it can lead to
perceptual errors, but also because it can result in misjudgments of
old perceptions. Sensory learning, which updates the sensory system to
better perceive the current environment, may contribute to the
formation of errors of memory.""

through its visual sensory system."

wrote in message ...
This article speaks to the problem all listeners confront each time they
sit down to "evaluate" a bit of audio gear, and why when perception is
restricted to listening alone percieved differences disappear.

Does this mean if you put an econobox receiver in the chassis of
the $350,000 high-end rig it would sound the same?

- Gary Rosen

"Does this mean if you put an econobox receiver in the chassis of
the $350,000 high-end rig it would sound the same?"

It is a test sscenario I have preposed many times. The closest we come to
it is when the two above are put side by side and listeners are told that
switching is taking place when in fact only the low price spread is being
used at all times. All the standard responses one gets about the obvious
differences between them is easily evoked. Some people who previously
believed in the subjective method have abandoned it when they presumed to
have had the high spread in the system and heard all the expected things
and were stunned to find later that in fact by accident the low price
spread was the active bit of gear. This is common with wire "auditions"
and the RS $5 wire connect is in the system when the $500 wire was thought
to have been inserted.