@Crispy Duck said:
There have been double-blind trials of this sort of thing, but many audiophiles / audiofools label themselves as 'subjectivists', which basically seems to mean that if they believe that something improves the sound from their system, then it really does, even if they can't actually tell the difference in a DBT.
Is this the same reason FLAC audio format has taken off? 1200 kb/s sound that's indistinguishable from a 300 kb/s MP3. Way to go.