It has always puzzled me how audiophiles (and audiophools alike) are brain locked in their gear. They don't seem to be interested in the music as an art form. You won't find photos of happy audiophiles enjoying music. You will see musicians preforming live at audiophile shows but they are there for comparison purposes so audiophiles can compare live sound to reproduction. The whole thing seems like a very elaborate way of not enjoying themselves. I'd like to dive into psychology here but my command of English is not enough.
There might be lessons to be drawn here regarding marketing and product placement. What I noticed so far is as follows
- Quality of production is always top notch. Even when they are selling wooden voodoo sticks they are of superb fit and finish.
- Good industrial design. They care that what they sell looks good even if it accomplishes nothing.
- Things that accomplish anything command ridiculously high prices. Price escalation is prominent.
- All audiophile gear has impeccable sales and marketing. Graphic designs, marketing material etc all top notch.
- Audiophile arena is separated in a few camps. All camps have their religiously zealous magazine editors.
- Voodoo snake oil items sometimes cost substantially less than expected. They use low price as a surprise element to suck in customers.
There is however one publication which has remained reasonably sane amidst all this. If you care to distinguish between philes and phools it might be an interesting reading. There are lengthy articles about whether cables make a difference and other such things. I think the cable tests mentioned by Hero999 above are the very tests published in the issue 16 of this magazine. (look at the back issues section) They are all available free in PDF form.
The Audio Critic
http://www.theaudiocritic.com/