[brohee]

A friend worked in an audiophile shop during his physics master and he'd swear the customer base was the most gullible bunch he ever saw... And mostly unswayable by rational arguments.

In any case someone ought to shear the sheep....

[calmworm]

I suspect some of that disconnect is because hearing itself isn’t standardized. Differences in frequency perception, hearing loss, and training can make two people genuinely hear different things.

[bzzzt]

Of course people have different hearing, but the audiophile market is overflowing with snake-oil stuff like 'oxygen free copper' cables to 'acoustic resonator discs'. Nobody's proven any of that stuff results in better sound quality (or even different quality after you graduate from junk stuff to reasonable equipment). Seems like an awfully expensive way of experiencing the placebo effect to me.

[dmd]

I know someone who spent upwards of $10k on a single 3-foot HDMI cable that was 'infused with Peruvian copper'. He says it makes the colors "more true".

[JCattheATM]

100% - most 'audiophile' wouldn't pass a blind test checking audio quality.