LOL...loved the "nod and smile, back away slowly"...! Sage advice!!
I'm not trying to put down the value of subjective satisfaction...you oughta have what you love, and if you think it works that's great. But at the same time, personally, I LIKE knowing if $300 speaker cables make a difference (or not) over $30 ones. If blind designs show people can't tell the difference between the two, many will still buy the more expensive ones to get the "better" cables and feel better about their system...and that's great. Whatever trips your trigger; for me, that info is helpful because it can save me some money.
At the risk of seeming to throw down a gauntlet (and I'm NOT) I just have to say I fundamentally disagree with the idea that:
"when the difference is not statistically significant, then the experiment is a failure. You go into an experiment with the purpose of discovering the magnitude and direction of the suspected difference between two variables."
IMO, truly objective researchers may HOPE for a difference, but have to ASSUME going in that there isn't one. Analogous to innocent until proven guilty. And in fact many times not finding statistically significant findings IS significant and meaningful...although perhaps not an end result desired by pharmaceutical companies, audio accessories manufacturers and the like.
To sum it up, although it'd stop a lot of back and forth (fun) discussion about speaker "break in", speaker wire, receiver "brightness", etc., all I'm saying is that I'd like to see any studies where people have done blind comparisons (e.g., all factors controlled except for brand of receiver) to see if there IS an auditory difference. If not, well, the placebo effect is real, but I don't necessarily want to pay for it.
BTW, got my Axioms yesterday and WOW...very nice...the black oak is MUCH nicer than I anticipated. Can't wait to set them up...going to do it this weekend.
Take care all.
