The funniest example of this is speaker cables. The magician Randi has offered a $1,000,000 prize if anyone can distinguish the sound of $7,200 speaker cables from the ubiquitous Monster cable of the same length in a blind A/B test.
Even funnier, in fact, is that three notables of a thinly disguised "business friendly" audio site -- two admistrators and one prominent "audiophile" member with a super megabuck system (probably the most exclusive setup on the planet, housed in a separate "listening barn" built specifically for this system) -- in fact decided to accept Randi's challenge. The point was to use the prominent member's own cables, which Randi apparently had allowed. Now, those cables happened to be the Transparent Audio Opus MM's, which retail at $34,000 (yes, that's right, three zeros at the end). These would then be auditioned blind against Randi's supermarket-variety off-the-shelf Monster wires (that probably retailed between $100 and $200). The audio site team, as they stated ahead of time, had "absolutely no doubt" that the prominent member (OK, let's give the name for him: "MikeL") would be able to tell which one is which "every time," as the $34K Transparents were clearly such superior products, as witnessed easily and on numerous earlier occasions by the team of our confident challengers.
Now, they wanted to rehearse the test situation a little before hitting to road to Randi, and, using MikeL's own system (which would make the test even easier, they assumed), proceeded to do a dress rehearsal using the two chosen cables. The result? They had to stop the tests as they turned out to be totally meaningless: MikeL (nor anyone else involved) could not tell at all the difference in the blind test segment. During the "sighted test" when they saw which cable was "on," they always thought the Opus MM's were a zillion times better, quite clearly. But in the blind test, they could not tell at all which was which and whether the cables had even been swapped.
They've been very quiet about this on the site, so you can learn more of these tests only from other sites, e.g., at
www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=941184 (a report by a third-party witness present for the tests). MikeL changed his moniker and withdrew from the public, as he said it, to reconsider the point of his audiophile beliefs and the rationale of the entire industry segment.
There was nothing wrong with MikeL's system; I think the cables must have been the cheapest part of it.
And what about Randi's test? Our demoralized audio site team went home instead and has stayed there ever since. Discussions about the tests they did and the Randi challenge remain heavily censored on the site, and references to either are quickly deleted or removed out of sight.
Another Randi challenger, the Stereophile magazine equipment "reviewer" Mike Fremer also backed out from Randi's challenge using some obscure profanity-laden last-minute excuse.
I'd say Randi will be able to keep his million dollars.
I wish [Randi] had chose plain 16 gauge lamp cord.
See that link above about the blind test by MikeL & the audio site managers: "I can say now that I am of the opinion that speaker wire basically makes no significant difference in sound quality, given sufficient gauge. Even the 16 gauge extension cord was fantastic." So, shall we make it, say, $3.40 a feet or would you rather gimme $34,000 for the same? Tough call...
PT
