E-Stat wrote: Rather than trying to dispute it, the more important question is how can anyone reasonably use the information? If you are swayed by luxurious wood finishes or big boxes, then do your auditioning twice?
The answer to the issue of blind testing heavily depends on who is doing the test and for what purpose.

If I'm simply choosing a home stereo, ultimately I'm just going to buy what I like. The influence of appearance, brand, price, exclusivity and so on will remain an active part of my daily use of the equipment. In fact, if snobbery is one of my primary goals - conscious or unconscious - then blind testing can actually be an unwanted affront if it reveals info at odds with my beliefs.

OTOH, if I'm a researcher or designer who is truly looking for superior audio performance, blind testing becomes far more important since it helps eliminate non-audio biases. After the desired performance is obtained, if the marketing folks wish to gussy things up to appeal to those non-audio biases, fine. But many serious designers are going to want to know the true performance of their product unencumbered by a hodge-podge of psychological factors.

That said, blind tests can be useful at the consumer end. While it is difficult to design a test procedure that is easy to use, one can still do simple things that move toward reducing the effect of bias. While it can be a blow to the ego to find out that a long-held belief isn't quite as credible as you thought, such knowledge, once absorbed, can help an audiophile redirect his efforts toward things that will get him better results.

The catch in all of this is our ego which is incredibly defensive about what we believe. That exhibits itself through the following mechanism. When we hear a "fact" that agrees with our belief, it is accepted immediately and uncritically - there will be no examination of the test procedures for points of weakness.

However, if the "fact" challenges what we believe, we'll get out our extra powerful microscope and start examining the test process for anything and everything that can be used to invalidate the results. One sees that repeatedly from the offended parties anytime results from a blind test are posted in an audio forum.

However, none of this is a surprise. It just proves that audiophiles are human. ;-)