Bias exists. So can the difference.

Expectation bias, confirmation bias, sunk cost, recency, vocabulary: I can find all five in my own listening chair. Not one of them proves that the difference I heard was not there.

This is what sceptics get wrong. They take the existence of bias as proof that no difference exists. But biases are person-specific; they tell you how a listener can be fooled, not what is real in the signal. Believing that bias explains away every difference is a bias on its own.

I have been fooled. I have bought things I later realised made no audible difference, and new gear always sounds better until six months pass and it is just my system again. I know the vocabulary trap too: once you learn the word soundstage, you start hearing soundstage, or you think you do.

And still, Transparent against Amazon Basics, in my own home, on my own Wilsons, over my own time, was a real difference. The bias was in the room, and so was the difference. Pretending that only one of them was there is simply choosing a side.

Two people can sit in that chair and hear the same thing. The one I trust is the one who keeps cross-examining it.