Spot on. the placebo effect is powerful and very likely plays a role in both scenarios.
Often I have supposed really expensive cables improve things just because it was time to replace cables already, or the connection was janky to begin with because the budding audiophile is upgrading from, say, bare wire connectors to banana plugs.
That isn’t really a placebo effect though. It’s just imagining things but for it to be a placebo effect your imagination would also have to lead to an actual, measurable improvement of the audio quality. Which needless to say is impossible.
Spot on. the placebo effect is powerful and very likely plays a role in both scenarios.
Often I have supposed really expensive cables improve things just because it was time to replace cables already, or the connection was janky to begin with because the budding audiophile is upgrading from, say, bare wire connectors to banana plugs.
That isn’t really a placebo effect though. It’s just imagining things but for it to be a placebo effect your imagination would also have to lead to an actual, measurable improvement of the audio quality. Which needless to say is impossible.