An interesting demonstration

rudyb, thanks a bunch for that. I did and came up with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8fHR9jKVM This is even better than my original link. 

All of you tweak people need to watch this. Close your eyes and listen to the sound all the way through. It never changes with your eyes closed. 

The other tie-in here is the habit some of us have of closing our eyes when we listen. Visual input conflicts with what we hear. It is easier to hear accurately with your eyes closed. Imaging is particularly sensitive to this. This proves how badly visual input can screw around with what you hear.

This also explains why nicer looking equipment seems to sound better and why manufacturers go to great length to make extraordinary looking gear when in reality they are doing nothing about sound quality. 

@nonoise , no, I would say we are down to wishful thinking and reality.

mahgister, did you mean, "trunk" of an elephant? 

Somehow I have to get through to you guys that listening to the sound and listening to music are two separate things. You can listen to sounds other than music like Gun shots, baby's crying, 18 wheelers passing by. an MRI machine, an F22 flying over, etc. When I am listening to music I am not analyzing the sound. You can switch back and forth. I usually listen to the sound at the beginning of a record as a short analysis of the quality of the recording. Once I have that down and maybe make an adjustment or two I'll settle back and enjoy the music. If a new instrument or voice comes in I might analyze it for a second then settle back again. What I or anyone else for that matter thinks of the sound is totally different from what I think or anyone else thinks of the music. Just listen to any Robert Johnson recording. Pretty bad right! Ah, but the music is another story. 

There are just as many if not more factors that make up a great audio performance, timbre, location, size, dimensionality, detail, dynamics, focus. Both your system and the source have to provide all of that and you have to pay attention to all of it. As a mental exercise can you do it all at once? I certainly can not. 

Hilde45, That is an interesting distinction. Listening to the landscape instead of individual instruments. I think I inferred that with the choir analogy. 

I certainly listen to the landscape with complicated pieces like a symphony unless a particular instrument sticks out that I am interested in.
The problem is I do not listen that way when I am evaluating sound. Listening to music and evaluating sound are two distinctly different endeavors. As soon as you start evaluating imaging by default you are listening to individual instruments and where they are, how big they are and so forth. The situation is complicated enough that I am not sure "Habit" applies other that you might listen to bass first and rhythm guitar second. But, for how long and when? The odds of you doing it exactly the same way are very high.

nonoise, you are making it far more complicated than it actually is. Why? Personal bias perhaps. 

Cigars make me sick.

That will work. Bring on mozartfan!

phcollie, I'll spring for the compound. If I hear any more about Tang Bang drivers I might get sick and I've run out of emesis basins. You wouldn't happen to have any?

I've got to have those pebbles. 

dadork, great explanation. 

phjcollie, as you note in the posts below yours you can see why the industry works the way it does. People are under the illusion that they know what is going on. As a mental exercise try adding 16 +24 at the same time adding 48+32. Those are easy additions and some of us can do it in rapid succession but none of us can do it at the exact same time. Listening is no different. Listen to a choir, pick out one voice then pick out another voice. Try and listen to them together at the exact same time. Your mind can bounce back and forth quickly between the two but you can not listen to both at the same time unless you ignore the individuality of the voices listening to the choir as one voice like you would listen to McCoy Tyner playing the piano. If you want to listen to one note you have to switch to Monk. You can only listen to or, the better term is "study" one detail at a time. With the infinite number of details in any recording the likelihood of anyone listening to a recording exactly the same way, paying attention to the exact same details in succession is non existent. Every time you listen to a recording you hear it the same but listen/study it differently. This creates the illusion that you are hearing new things when you are only studying different ones. This is not my opinion but a well proven fact.

@artemus_5, you can twist things any way you want but you had no idea what was going on until you saw the lyrics. Neither did any one else. Any one can listen over and over again to any song backwards and come up with some plausible lyrics. 

@tomcy6, The speakers we were demonstrating with and the room situation were so poor I can not make a comment as to sound quality. I can say the Accuphase was much better built. But these people were never going to spring for the Accuphase, way too expensive. I was selling the Marantz over other brands I did not get "spiffed" on like Onkyo, Pioneer and Sanyo. Spiffed means we were getting a bonus on top of the usual commission. The owner did this for equipment he wanted to move for whatever reason. These inexpensive receivers were all pretty much the same. Marantz was easy to move because of the name and it looked great. There were plenty of things some of the salesman did that were clearly unethical like demonstrating speakers out of phase to switch the customer. Most of the speakers back then were garbage. I think the little Dynaco A 25s were the best speaker we sold. We did carry Ohm speakers but back then I did not care for them. The owner did not care for carrying large speakers. We carried mostly bookshelf speakers. I was plenty happy to get out of there. Once I got a clientele going I sold equipment only from two High end stores.  

@artemus_5 , It is very hard to take Paul Mcgowan seriously. This has nothing to do with the topic which is Poppy's demonstration.

djones, thanks for the link. I have run into him before but have not read him extensively. I will trundle through these articles. I'm sure he is antithetical to the mythology advanced by many audiophiles who insist on taking their own hearing seriously. One should never make a determination after one "trial" of unblinded hearing. The simple truth is that if it looks better it will sound better. If it costs more it will sound better.
Neither cost not looks is a determinant of sound quality. I use to sell cheap Marantz receivers (we got spiffed on these) by blind ABing the customer with expensive Accuphase separates. They could never tell the difference and happily bought the Marantz when they discovered it sounded just as good.