I have a audiophilic friend who was preparing himself for months to buy a new interlink from Siltech.
Months of reading reviews and also on forums kept him of the street. Once he had it, he was so pumped up that in a way he was very biased when A/B ing with the old interlink cable, he said everytime, “YES it sounds better”. I was sitting next to him and was talking him to the mouth “Yes I think I hear a difference”. The truth was that I really didn’t here the difference and If there was any I could easily say that it probably was a increase of 0,001 % in good or bad favour. Bottomline is that your mind is the biggest infleuncer.
The reason I was talking him to mouth was to not go into endless (and useless) discussion over what I was hearing and concluding (perception is subjective to me!)
Man I always found it hard to have discussion with audphiles, espacially when trying to convince him that the recording he was listening to was made with cheap ass cables and mics and mixed with digital effects… 