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It can also keep life expensive
A lot of audiophiles are perhaps spending large sums of money on items that are unlikely to add anything real in sonic terms to their system, where they could have spent the money on something more fruitful. Like many audiophiles, my budget is not unlimited. I probably wouldn't own the particular speakers I managed to afford if I'd diverted resources to things like expensive cables and other things in the tweakier side of the hobby...so I'm happy with some of the things I learned from blind testing...and from other people blind testing gear.
Personally I don't do it a lot, but when it's something I'm really curious about, or especially if I want to ensure my money will be well spent, then I sometimes do blind tests. And sometimes, just for fun.
Also, as to keeping life simple, if you don't worry about things like "how will my cables change the sound?" or "do I need power conditioning?" or "do I need to buy cable lifters" or "how long until this thing breaks in" etc, that certainly simplifies lots of the complexity that other audiophiles are bringing to the hobby.
I actually wore a sleeping mask. We did randomized switching determined by coin flips. We first did a randomized test to ensure I could not detect which cable he was switching in just by the sound of his doing so. Nope. On to the test:
Well...whaddya know? Absolutely random results. There was nothing of that "obviously darkened, richer" sonic signature to detect the Shunyata cable from the cheap cable. Zilch.
Yet another lesson in the power of sighted bias - even when you aren't expecting differences you can think you "hear" them.
A certain kind of audiophile will "fail" a test like this and look for ways to reject the test. I took it as a lesson - obviously not rigorous science, but a data point on the issue. Subsequently I have done a number of blind tests - video cables, music servers, DACs, pre-amps - with interesting results (positive tests for differences in some cases - e.g. DACs, pre-amps - not in others - cables, servers).
So, with this background, I was looking forward to seeing the result of NC Lee's test. I hope he does it and posts the result.