Expectation biases are universal...
The problem is not the universal presence of biases, it is when we reject outright any claim based on a personal experience to be ONLY the result of biases, because it suit our own biases...
Placebos and biases are normal daily life events... Hearing a change in an audio system modulo ANY change or addition of a device is something to be experiment first.... If many experiment it positively the probability that this is only a placebo decrease with each new testimony....
After that it is fun to do blind test, but it is in no way a scientific proof for many reasons, one is the fact that assessing audio effects need to be done by someone in his own environment, and parameters, audiophile listening is not a superhuman innate bat ability, it is ONLY an habit , a learned ability to discern in a well known environment...
Blindtest are very difficult to realize....
By the way stradivarius were very well known to all violonists... It is not a bias only, it is a FACT,the strad are good and they were very well known by the educated ears of violonist...Then this fact induced a justified bias in favor of the strads over the vast majoriry of modern violin... But a genius luthier come and....
What was NOT AT ALL well known was the rare modern violin able to surpass them.... It is NOT the great majority of modern violins that surpass Strads... Only a few, not very well known nor often recorded like the strads and these modern master piece were designed by a master luthier NOT by all modern luthier... These rare modern birds were not listen to very often contrary to strads... Then a justified bias existed in favor of strads compared to the majority of modern violins which were inferior and this bias was then effectively justified by experience.... Indeed VERY FEW modern violins were really superior to the strads... The blind test only make this surprizing new fact known....Some modern luthier are also geniuses like the one of the past...
Then if you think about what i just said you must not be surprized.... All violinists are not deluded or guided only by their biases at all, like you suggest erroneously here... their bias in favor of strads was justified and replaced by a new discovery of some new masterpiece... They simply discovered a new modern absolute master piece which was not known much before the spectacular test made it well known... Even if biases are justified they can be proven wrong for sure...That does not means that there never exist a superiority of the strads and that this was ONLY a delusion...
Reality is more complex than your own biases about biases, sorry....
The modern violins were preferred.
Here’s the kicker though. When asked if this would affect the values of the Strads the study lead said: "If you know it’s a Strad, you will hear it differently," Fritz says. "And you can’t turn off that effect."
Here we go again!
Then reality is not composed by deluded audiophiles and violonists in a corner against blind test science truth in the other corner, like you suggest...
Reality is not SIMPLE..... Reality exist not in black and white but in colors on earth for the eyes able to see them....
