Some of you have gone off the deep end in making extreme price comparisons. No, a Yorx brand won't touch a Mark Levinson, but that was not what I was talking about originally. Let me give you just one real-life example of "golden ear" absurdity.

In the late '80s, Stereophile, along with its sister publications, hated CD sound until one of its writers declared that he had FINALLY found a way to make CDs listenable (and I do not exaggerate the emphasis): Polish them with ArmorAll, said he, not to mention put a rubber band (an expensive one, of course) around the CD, put a weight on it (if possible; many players then opened to the top), and paint the edges green with a special pen made of pixie dust, I suppose. Of course, you had to play them in a $4,000 transport and matching D-to-A converter. They preached this gospel with a fervor Jimmy Swaggert would admire.

At their '89 show in New York, they put on a single-blind test comparing a doctored CD played on a very expensive transport vs. an untouched CD played on an off-the-shelf Philips unit. Both players were connected digitally to a common and expensive D-to-A converter. Seven varied musical examples were played each two times. The idea was for test participants to decide if they were listening to the same player/CD or two different players/CDs. More than 1,630 people took part, and not one of them got a perfect score. If I recall, only one or two got six out of seven. Stereophile took a very long time publishing the results and did as little as possible to bring attention to them. Later, it was discovered that ArmorAll could damage the CD substrate.

In short, you could have obtained the same results with 1,630 deaf participants making guesses. Why? Because there was no difference to be heard, notwithstanding Stereophile's enthusiastic endorsement of every CD tweak and overpriced transports. Anyone disagreeing was literally insulted as having an inadequate system, hearing, or both. I know. I disagreed vocally at the show.

I could give you other examples.