Originally Posted by clockworks999:
“I'm sure that the placebo effect, or justifying to oneself the cost of a component, can happen, but that wouldn't explain why some people prefer the cheaper option some of the time. Maybe the "cheapskate effect"?”
I think the "cheapskate effect" is an entirely plausible explanation for such an outcome. Humans are prey to very complex, often subconscious, influences - which is why it is so important to eliminate them (the influences, not the humans!) from any rigorous system of testing. This has long been recognised in medical trials, and people really should question why magazines presenting glowing reviews of the latest "high end" HDMI cable / speaker cable / power cable etc
never conduct this sort of testing.
Note that I make no distinction between analogue and digital signals here. The only difference is that the absurdity of what is being claimed is more starkly revealed in the case of digital signals, because we can state very precisely what it would mean for an HDMI cable to produce (for example) deeper blacks, and point out that this would entail an extraordinary amount of processing within the metal strands of the cable in order to selectively modify the appropriate bits. Perhaps poor cables have
more processing power, and so selectively degrade the right bits, whereas high end cables just pass them on unchanged!
For analogue cables, the situation is more complex of course. But even if some measurable difference in electrical characteristics between two cables can be demonstrated (and lets face it, that's probably true for any two dissimilar cables), that is a very long way from showing that this makes
any difference at all (not merely a "subtle" one) to a listener or viewer.
Consider just how absurd this "high end" world is: we have cables that are (through some unspecified physical mechanism) "directional". We have cables that need "breaking in" to achieve their full potential (for the lazy audiophile, there are "
cable cookers" that will perform this onerous task for you). There are speaker cables so exotic that they must be supported on custom made stands coated in special audiophile varnish. There's no end to the madness.