[RMesser9]

I wonder what percentage of the overall audiophile market is spent on things that make no audible difference? 50%? More? If we added that to the money spent for unnecessary bias in other markets, we might find that placebo is the principle export of the US!

Probably more than 50%

 

[bigshot]

I think even higher than that.

 

[71 dB]

I wonder what percentage of the overall audiophile market is spent on things that make no audible difference? 50%? More? If we added that to the money spent for unnecessary bias in other markets, we might find that placebo is the principle export of the US!

As if placebo was an US thing. I am affraid it is universal. The US is not the only one exporting it.

 

[Artu15]

Whats intresting for me is that when i listen to gear and have like 10 minutes breaks beetwen testing i can swear that i hear a great diffrence. But when i minimize the testing time to a few seconds i see the thruth. That the diffrences are really minimal and you sometimes have to focus really hard to notice them.

 

[Artu15]

But im sure that i usually dont like the best obejctivly performing gear. So i dont pay great attention to measurments. Whats important for me is that they wont be absolutly terrible . For Example AudioGD sound bad. But Hifiman EF400, Burson sounds great to my ears

 

[Steve999]

But im sure that i usually dont like the best obejctivly performing gear. So i dont pay great attention to measurments. Whats important for me is that they wont be absolutly terrible . For Example AudioGD sound bad. But Hifiman EF400, Burson sounds great to my ears

We’re not on exactly the same page but in the same ballpark. I pick the equipment with the features i value most and that I just kind of like having and that is not priced out of proportion to what it really is, after I do my due diligence that it will be transparent or very close to it. Like you said if there is an audible difference or degradation it’s often quite negligoble, often down to the level of hair-splitting.

For transducers I like a reasonably priced headphone or speakers that get me into the ballpark fully extended for the great majority of recordings and neutral. Once I get to a certain level in the area of extended and neutral, which is really not very expensive nowadays, things like my brain adapting, room setup, furniture, subwoofers, or for headphones crossfeed and EQ, become larger factors or differentiators than those last increments toward transducer accuracy.

I might respect the numbers on audio electronics a little more than you—if it measures in the range that is generally considered audibly transparent, and functions as advertised, I don’t consider my fluctuating perceptions over time to be attributable to anything but me.

In the last maybe five years home audio that comes close enough for me to extended and neutral has become enormously easier to afford and set up, due to information that is increasingly out there in books and on the web and things you can learn and measure with a moderate amount of intelligence and effort, imho. Once I get into a certain range I feel pretty confident that in terms of sound I’m getting to a zone of six one, half-dozen the other.

 

[gargani]

We’re not on exactly the same page but in the same ballpark. I pick the equipment with the features i value most and that I just kind of like having and that is not priced out of proportion to what it really is, after I do my due diligence that it will be transparent or very close to it. Like you said if there is an audible difference or degradation it’s often quite negligoble, often down to the level of hair-splitting.

For transducers I like a reasonably priced headphone or speakers that get me into the ballpark fully extended for the great majority of recordings and neutral. Once I get to a certain level in the area of extended and neutral, which is really not very expensive nowadays, things like my brain adapting, room setup, furniture, subwoofers, or for headphones crossfeed and EQ, become larger factors or differentiators than those last increments toward transducer accuracy.

I might respect the numbers on audio electronics a little more than you—if it measures in the range that is generally considered audibly transparent, and functions as advertised, I don’t consider my fluctuating perceptions over time to be attributable to anything but me.

In the last maybe five years home audio that comes close enough for me to extended and neutral has become enormously easier to afford and set up, due to information that is increasingly out there in books and on the web and things you can learn and measure with a moderate amount of intelligence and effort, imho. Once I get into a certain range I feel pretty confident that in terms of sound I’m getting to a zone of six one, half-dozen the other.

I think audio perception is fluid, constantly changing. This also has an effect as well as external conditions and placebo and expectation bias.
This stuff is complicated. For me if an amp or dac measures below the human audibility threshold, I'm satisfied.

 

[gregorio]

Whats intresting for me is that when i listen to gear and have like 10 minutes breaks beetwen testing i can swear that i hear a great diffrence.

And that’s the thing, you ARE hearing “a great difference”, you’re not imagining it and it’s not placebo! What seems to catch many audiophiles out is the cause of that slight or great difference. Due to marketing, reviews, etc., they will often mis-attribute that difference to the audiophile equipment they are listening to/testing, rather than to the real reason. When we listen (or process any sensory information) we are able to focus our attention not only on that specific sense but on specific aspects/features of what we’re sensing.

For example, we can look at a photo of a group of people, focus on a particular person and notice more detail about that person but at the same time of course we will be less aware of details in the other parts of the photo we’re not concentrating on. In all likelihood, we’re going to change the focus of our attention numerous times in just a few seconds (as we look at the different people in the photo) and each time we will notice more details in what we’re focusing on, while loosing details in the other areas, even if we’ve previously focused on those other areas. Obviously the photograph doesn’t know where we’re focusing and change it’s level of detail accordingly, the photograph doesn’t change at all, it’s our perception that changes depending on where we’re focusing our attention. The same is true of listening, we can (and do) concentrate on particular features of what we’re listening to, it’s what allows us to pick out a particular voice in a crowd (the “cocktail party effect”) or pick out particular instruments/lines in a music ensemble (whilst loosing the details of what we’re not focusing on).

Going back to your example: What exactly were the things/thing you were focusing on within the recording before your 10 min break (and at what level of focus/concentration)? After a 10 min break it’s very unlikely you will instantly go back to focusing on the exact same thing/things with the exact same level of focus and therefore you will hear a difference.

This is what seems to fool so many audiophiles and what a considerable amount of audiophile snake oil and marketing relies on!

But when i minimize the testing time to a few seconds i see the thruth.

Going back to the group photo analogy; if you crop the photo to just one or two people, there are far fewer people to focus our attention on and therefore far fewer different perspectives. Likewise, you have far fewer things to focus on if you only listen to a few seconds worth of music and also, it’s far easier to maintain that specific focus if there’s little time between each playing and therefore it’s far more likely you will hear them as in fact they are, with no difference.

I think audio perception is fluid, constantly changing.

Yep, as explained above. Obviously though, there’s a great deal more detail within what I explained, as perception is naturally drawn to certain features and this is what composers have been exploiting for many centuries (and producers/mixers for many decades).

G

 

[T 1000]

Whats intresting for me is that when i listen to gear and have like 10 minutes breaks beetwen testing i can swear that i hear a great diffrence. But when i minimize the testing time to a few seconds i see the thruth. That the diffrences are really minimal and you sometimes have to focus really hard to notice them.

When you notice a big difference (the one after 10 minutes), what is the big difference, in what aspect of the sound, and what are small changes? Do you just think it's big?
I'm interested in how you perceive the changes
Don't get me wrong, I don't think you're making things up.
It is for sure from your prejudice, but please answer my question.


There is no doubt that some patterns can be applied to a part of the population, but they cannot be applied as a rule to all

 

[GoldenSound]

I think a big part of the reason there's still so much debate around things like audibility differences in DACs, cables, software, etc etc is simply because a lot of people misunderstand placebo/expectation bias themselves.

There's a few key points:

1) Placebo doesn't mean you're lying or stupid
2) Expectation bias goes both ways
3) Placebo affects EVERYONE regardless of your experience, hearing ability, gear, age, knowledge etc
4) A difference cannot be 'too big/obvious to be placebo'
5) Sighted testing isn't reliable, and controlled blind testing is actually really hard to do. Most 'blind tests' are not actually blind.
6) Expectation bias can affect you even if you don't consciously expect a particular outcome


1) Placebo doesn't mean you're lying or stupid.

This is probably the biggest one. Some people seem to think that when someone says 'it's probably just placebo', that they're accusing the other person of lying. Placebo is a crazy powerful influence.
When you say "I can hear a difference in cables", I BELIEVE YOU. In fact I'm pretty certain that yes, you ARE hearing a perhaps even very clear and obvious difference.
What I'm not certain about is whether that difference you're hearing is because of a genuine difference between the cables, or because your mind is playing tricks on you.

Secondly, this doesn't mean 'you're stupid'. EVERYONE is susceptible to placebo. You are, I am, and everyone reading this is. It has nothing to do with intelligence and it is not something that we can be trained to overcome.


2) Expectation bias goes both ways

"Expectation bias occurs when an individual's expectations about an outcome influence perceptions of one's own or others' behaviour" - ScienceDirect.com

Obviously the main argument for the existence of audible differences in things like cables is simply that....well...people say they can hear them.
And as explained above, I'm CERTAIN that they are hearing a difference. BUT, in order to show that the difference being heard is due to a genuine difference between cables and not just placebo, you MUST do a controlled blind test to eliminate placebo as a factor. You must entirely remove your ability to discern which cable is which by any other means than hearing. And then do enough runs to ensure that the result was not just obtained by chance. (See point 5)
If you don't, then whilst yes the difference might seem huge and obvious to you, neither you nor I actually know that it really exists.

Contrarily, many people will use an argument such as 'Well I tried both and I couldn't hear a difference so you must be imagining it/it must be placebo'.
This argument forgets that expectation bias and placebo goes both ways. If you believe cables or DACs or anything at all doesn't make a difference, then it's quite likely you won't hear a difference when you compare. Because expectation bias goes both ways!

I could go get swimming lessons. But if I fundamentally believe swimming teachers can't teach you to swim, they can't really force me to float now can they?
Blind testing can show that something is audible, it cannot be used to prove a negative/prove that something is NOT audible.

3) Placebo affects EVERYONE regardless of your experience, hearing ability, gear, age, knowledge etc

This is again quite a common counter-argument to the suggestion that a difference might be caused by placebo. People will list off a resume of their experience, knowledge, intelligence, hearing ability, wealth etc, but none of this matters.
EVERYONE is susceptible to placebo. It doesn't matter how good your hearing is, what you've heard before, or how much experience/training you have.

Placebo affects everyone including you, me, Albert Einstein and there's a reason why even in fields like medicine where effects should be more obvious, blind testing and control groups are used. Because sighted testing is NOT reliable.

Another related argument being that 'it can't be expectation bias because I went in expecting the opposite to happen'. Unfortunately again, this doesn't matter. What you consciously expect doesn't negate expectation bias. For placebo to be a potential factor you simply have to be AWARE of what you're listening to.
To test properly, you have to fully remove your knowledge of what is being listened to.

4) A difference cannot be 'too big/obvious' to be placebo

Related to the previous point, nothing is 'too obvious' to be placebo.
Even outside of audio there have been plenty of other people that have even taken advantage of just how powerful placebo and expectation bias can be.
Take a look at faith healers for example. People will go from being in such chronic pain they can't walk to suddenly running and crying across a stage as a 'miracle' or the pain of their cancer fades away.
If you want a couple interesting resources on the power of suggestibility, I would HIGHLY recommend watching 'an honest liar'. A documentary about the life of James Randi, who fun fact: Had an outstanding prize of $1,000,000 available to anyone able to demonstrate supernatural powers, INCLUDING the ability to hear differences in speaker cables. No one was able to pass....
His debunking of various faith healers, magicians and psychics in often very high profile and elaborate ways are both entertaining and fascinating as he explains how all of it works and why they work so well.



His TED Talk is also excellent:


I had quite an entertaining personal experience with someone similar, a stage hypnotist called Martin Taylor. (He was the one who Derren Brown credits as inspiring him into his current line of work).
He described himself as 'the hypnotist who doesn't use hypnosis'.
In his act he with complete and utter transparency explains how 'hypnotism' works. How there are no trances, there are no magic or intricate brain-melting methods used to get people to do his bidding. No, people will do the things he says, hear the things he tells them to hear, smell the things he tells them to smell simply because the power of suggestion and expectation can be pushed to extraordinary limits. Especially when there's a room full of a couple hundred people watching. Our brains are fascinating and flawed and can be exploited.

He comes up and quite clearly explains that 'hypnosis' doesn't exist and that none of it is real. And yet 5 minutes later he has people with their hands stuck together unable to pull them apart, people shouting things in response to trigger words, falling asleep on command and smelling a horrifically unpleasant smell that doesn't actually exist. He's excellent. And a great example of how no, nothing is 'too obvious' or big to not be placebo. The people on stage didn't ACTUALLY have their hands stuck together. They were just told that it was impossible to pull them apart and due to a mix of suggestion and pressure from both themselves and others, they therefore were unable to do so.

5) Sighted testing isn't reliable, and controlled blind testing is actually really hard to do. Most 'blind tests' are not actually blind.

I've already talked above about how sighted testing isn't reliable. No matter how 'obvious' a difference is or how clear it seems to you. If you are testing sighted, then you cannot be sure of what is causing that difference.

But the other issue is that there are a number of 'blind tests' that get shared in various places....that aren't actually blind. It's actually REALLY hard to do a blind test properly.
Let's take the example of cables.

- You have to ensure that the switching itself is random.
This is the 'double blind' part you might also hear. You cannot have a human determine whether cables should or should not be swapped during the test, because our own pattern prediction can skew results. Switching must be determined by something as close to truly random as possible, such as a random number generator.

- You can't let the participant(s) know whether cables have been swapped.
You need them to leave the room, not be able to hear what is happening inside, and make sure that the delay between runs is fixed. Otherwise even subconsciously they might have an indication of whether cables have been swapped based purely on how long it took before they were able to come back in, or even the sound of the cables being plugged in. Some cables will sound different when being moved/plugged in than others. So just having their view hidden is insufficient.

Just these two alone already make it a fair bit more involved than you might expect, but the third point is the biggest one:

- You MUST do a large number of runs, else even if you got all of them right, your result is not actually statistically significant.
If you do a low number of runs, then even if you get most or all of them right, there is a large chance that you could have just gotten that result by guessing.
For example if you get 8/10 right, there is still a 5.5% chance you just got that by guessing.
If you keep the proportion of correct answers the same (80%), but double the number of runs to 20, then 16/20 correct reduces that probability of the result being just luck to 0.6%! MUCH lower.
Do 50 runs, and get 40/50 correct, and there is only a 0.001% chance you could have obtained that by guessing.

So many blind tests online either do not appropriately control for possible tells or indicators. Or only do a small number of runs.
7 or 8/10 might seem significant, that's almost all of them right! But actually, there is still a noteworthy chance it was just luck. Do more runs, and get a better result, not much point doing something half-heartedly and getting inconclusive results when you could just do it a bit longer and get something much more concrete.


6) Expectation bias can affect you even if you don't consciously expect a particular outcome

As mentioned earlier, expectation bias only requires you to be AWARE of what is being listened to. Either directly via sighted testing, or just getting an indicator that might skew probability of results, such as the sound of cables being swapped or the time it took to do so.
What you believe going into the test doesn't actually determine whether Expectation bias is/isn't a factor. It ALWAYS is

 

[bigshot]

With a normal person, the biggest bias is probably expectation bias. But with audiophiles, I'd argue that validation bias is even more important. Audiophiles get invested into how much better their trained golden ears hear than everyone else's ears. They are motivated to skew things to prove their hearing superiority. Also, audiophiles tend to decide on WHY a problem exists, than whether it exists at all. I see this all the time here with the people who come in and argue. They have some pet concept they've read somewhere in sales literature or some audio misconception and they doggedly do everything in their power to make that the case- cherry picking, refusal to believe science to the contrary, refusal to believe in the scientific method... all this to prove that they're RIGHT, DAMMIT! They usually don't argue on point and they usually don't provide evidence (unless it's cherry picked) because they are arguing an emotional thing, not a factual one.

 

[T 1000]

I think a big part of the reason there's still so much debate around things like audibility differences in DACs, cables, software, etc etc is simply because a lot of people misunderstand placebo/expectation bias themselves.

There's a few key points:

1) Placebo doesn't mean you're lying or stupid
2) Expectation bias goes both ways
3) Placebo affects EVERYONE regardless of your experience, hearing ability, gear, age, knowledge etc
4) A difference cannot be 'too big/obvious to be placebo'
5) Sighted testing isn't reliable, and controlled blind testing is actually really hard to do. Most 'blind tests' are not actually blind.
6) Expectation bias can affect you even if you don't consciously expect a particular outcome


1) Placebo doesn't mean you're lying or stupid.

This is probably the biggest one. Some people seem to think that when someone says 'it's probably just placebo', that they're accusing the other person of lying. Placebo is a crazy powerful influence.
When you say "I can hear a difference in cables", I BELIEVE YOU. In fact I'm pretty certain that yes, you ARE hearing a perhaps even very clear and obvious difference.
What I'm not certain about is whether that difference you're hearing is because of a genuine difference between the cables, or because your mind is playing tricks on you.

Secondly, this doesn't mean 'you're stupid'. EVERYONE is susceptible to placebo. You are, I am, and everyone reading this is. It has nothing to do with intelligence and it is not something that we can be trained to overcome.


2) Expectation bias goes both ways

"Expectation bias occurs when an individual's expectations about an outcome influence perceptions of one's own or others' behaviour" - ScienceDirect.com

Obviously the main argument for the existence of audible differences in things like cables is simply that....well...people say they can hear them.
And as explained above, I'm CERTAIN that they are hearing a difference. BUT, in order to show that the difference being heard is due to a genuine difference between cables and not just placebo, you MUST do a controlled blind test to eliminate placebo as a factor. You must entirely remove your ability to discern which cable is which by any other means than hearing. And then do enough runs to ensure that the result was not just obtained by chance. (See point 5)
If you don't, then whilst yes the difference might seem huge and obvious to you, neither you nor I actually know that it really exists.

Contrarily, many people will use an argument such as 'Well I tried both and I couldn't hear a difference so you must be imagining it/it must be placebo'.
This argument forgets that expectation bias and placebo goes both ways. If you believe cables or DACs or anything at all doesn't make a difference, then it's quite likely you won't hear a difference when you compare. Because expectation bias goes both ways!

I could go get swimming lessons. But if I fundamentally believe swimming teachers can't teach you to swim, they can't really force me to float now can they?
Blind testing can show that something is audible, it cannot be used to prove a negative/prove that something is NOT audible.

3) Placebo affects EVERYONE regardless of your experience, hearing ability, gear, age, knowledge etc

This is again quite a common counter-argument to the suggestion that a difference might be caused by placebo. People will list off a resume of their experience, knowledge, intelligence, hearing ability, wealth etc, but none of this matters.
EVERYONE is susceptible to placebo. It doesn't matter how good your hearing is, what you've heard before, or how much experience/training you have.

Placebo affects everyone including you, me, Albert Einstein and there's a reason why even in fields like medicine where effects should be more obvious, blind testing and control groups are used. Because sighted testing is NOT reliable.

Another related argument being that 'it can't be expectation bias because I went in expecting the opposite to happen'. Unfortunately again, this doesn't matter. What you consciously expect doesn't negate expectation bias. For placebo to be a potential factor you simply have to be AWARE of what you're listening to.
To test properly, you have to fully remove your knowledge of what is being listened to.

4) A difference cannot be 'too big/obvious' to be placebo

Related to the previous point, nothing is 'too obvious' to be placebo.
Even outside of audio there have been plenty of other people that have even taken advantage of just how powerful placebo and expectation bias can be.
Take a look at faith healers for example. People will go from being in such chronic pain they can't walk to suddenly running and crying across a stage as a 'miracle' or the pain of their cancer fades away.
If you want a couple interesting resources on the power of suggestibility, I would HIGHLY recommend watching 'an honest liar'. A documentary about the life of James Randi, who fun fact: Had an outstanding prize of $1,000,000 available to anyone able to demonstrate supernatural powers, INCLUDING the ability to hear differences in speaker cables. No one was able to pass....
His debunking of various faith healers, magicians and psychics in often very high profile and elaborate ways are both entertaining and fascinating as he explains how all of it works and why they work so well.



His TED Talk is also excellent:


I had quite an entertaining personal experience with someone similar, a stage hypnotist called Martin Taylor. (He was the one who Derren Brown credits as inspiring him into his current line of work).
He described himself as 'the hypnotist who doesn't use hypnosis'.
In his act he with complete and utter transparency explains how 'hypnotism' works. How there are no trances, there are no magic or intricate brain-melting methods used to get people to do his bidding. No, people will do the things he says, hear the things he tells them to hear, smell the things he tells them to smell simply because the power of suggestion and expectation can be pushed to extraordinary limits. Especially when there's a room full of a couple hundred people watching. Our brains are fascinating and flawed and can be exploited.

He comes up and quite clearly explains that 'hypnosis' doesn't exist and that none of it is real. And yet 5 minutes later he has people with their hands stuck together unable to pull them apart, people shouting things in response to trigger words, falling asleep on command and smelling a horrifically unpleasant smell that doesn't actually exist. He's excellent. And a great example of how no, nothing is 'too obvious' or big to not be placebo. The people on stage didn't ACTUALLY have their hands stuck together. They were just told that it was impossible to pull them apart and due to a mix of suggestion and pressure from both themselves and others, they therefore were unable to do so.

5) Sighted testing isn't reliable, and controlled blind testing is actually really hard to do. Most 'blind tests' are not actually blind.

I've already talked above about how sighted testing isn't reliable. No matter how 'obvious' a difference is or how clear it seems to you. If you are testing sighted, then you cannot be sure of what is causing that difference.

But the other issue is that there are a number of 'blind tests' that get shared in various places....that aren't actually blind. It's actually REALLY hard to do a blind test properly.
Let's take the example of cables.

- You have to ensure that the switching itself is random.
This is the 'double blind' part you might also hear. You cannot have a human determine whether cables should or should not be swapped during the test, because our own pattern prediction can skew results. Switching must be determined by something as close to truly random as possible, such as a random number generator.

- You can't let the participant(s) know whether cables have been swapped.
You need them to leave the room, not be able to hear what is happening inside, and make sure that the delay between runs is fixed. Otherwise even subconsciously they might have an indication of whether cables have been swapped based purely on how long it took before they were able to come back in, or even the sound of the cables being plugged in. Some cables will sound different when being moved/plugged in than others. So just having their view hidden is insufficient.

Just these two alone already make it a fair bit more involved than you might expect, but the third point is the biggest one:

- You MUST do a large number of runs, else even if you got all of them right, your result is not actually statistically significant.
If you do a low number of runs, then even if you get most or all of them right, there is a large chance that you could have just gotten that result by guessing.
For example if you get 8/10 right, there is still a 5.5% chance you just got that by guessing.
If you keep the proportion of correct answers the same (80%), but double the number of runs to 20, then 16/20 correct reduces that probability of the result being just luck to 0.6%! MUCH lower.
Do 50 runs, and get 40/50 correct, and there is only a 0.001% chance you could have obtained that by guessing.

So many blind tests online either do not appropriately control for possible tells or indicators. Or only do a small number of runs.
7 or 8/10 might seem significant, that's almost all of them right! But actually, there is still a noteworthy chance it was just luck. Do more runs, and get a better result, not much point doing something half-heartedly and getting inconclusive results when you could just do it a bit longer and get something much more concrete.


6) Expectation bias can affect you even if you don't consciously expect a particular outcome

As mentioned earlier, expectation bias only requires you to be AWARE of what is being listened to. Either directly via sighted testing, or just getting an indicator that might skew probability of results, such as the sound of cables being swapped or the time it took to do so.
What you believe going into the test doesn't actually determine whether Expectation bias is/isn't a factor. It ALWAYS is

I agree with everything that has been said about the scientific hypothesis.
Except for the cases when I perform tests on well-known music sections, and when it is not my goal to deceive myself that I am in profit when in fact it was taken away from sound, just because 100 out of 100 say that it is a "fantastic" thing.
My point is that mass psychology cannot be applied as an absolute truth to everyone.
I think your hypothesis is applicable in cases where there are small changes (or none), but when the change is obvious, then... I don't think anyone is that imaginative (except maybe Artu15)
I agree with you that blind tests in controlled conditions should exist, as a fire-wall for various frauds


And yes, an "audiophile" is someone who is fascinated by listening, an audiophile do not listen with logic, but with "observation".
And as I said before, the science of sound and listening go hand in hand, but listening decides, and science enables
It's my POV

 

[bigshot]

I listen to music, not equipment.

 

[T 1000]

I listen to music, not equipment.

That's how it should be, but your sentence seems naive to me.
No equipment, no music

 

[bigshot]

The equipment is just a means to an end. If it presents the music cleanly and efficiently, it’s done its job. A lot if audiophiles go beyond that, inventing reasons to worry about things that don’t matter. They end up being able to speak at length about trivia and outright snake oil related to sound reproduction, yet still listen to the same music they listened to when they were 20. There’s no time to explore new music because it’s all taken up by shopping and researching new purchases. The focus on black and chrome electronic boxes overwhelms their interest in music, which is the real point of all of this.

Look at how much people are invested in arguing about high data rate lossy, 16/44.1 and 24/96, or the importance of transports to sound quality, or whether fancy cables are necessary, or whether a $2,000 DAC sounds better than an $8 Apple dongle or jitter rates or distortion levels. Most of the time, none of this matters. Maybe differences are measurable, but when you're sitting on the couch listening to Mozart's Requiem they don't make a lick of difference. Audiophiles take obsessive compulsive disorder to new levels... and it is normal and expected of them by other audiophiles!

The main concerns with putting together a home audio system is finding transducers that you like. If you can achieve that, you're most of the way there. The easiest part is creating a system of amps and players that sounds great. The only thing to consider with them is that they are ergonomic and functional and they have the features you need. If you have a speaker system, room acoustics and layout can be added to the list of important considerations. That can be quite difficult, because intelligent compromises need to be made between sound quality and the everyday use of the room when not listening.