The real snake oil is certainty

The real snake oil in this hobby isn't expensive cables or power conditioners. It's certainty. I said it knowing that both sides would hate me for it.

Sceptics will call me delusional, and some audiophiles will accuse me of betraying the faith. Fine. The audio world has split into two warring tribes, and both are partially right and partially delusional: the golden ears with no methodology and no controls, the measurement gurus assuming we have already found every measurement that matters to human perception.

What the two camps share is one poison in two bottles. The certainty of the sceptic who has never listened. The certainty of the audiophile who has never questioned. Both are poisons, different bottles, and neither will ever learn anything new from a system.

I would rather stay uncomfortable in the middle. I have been wrong in my own room more than once, and the lesson was never that my ears are worthless or that they are infallible. It was that the listening and the questioning have to happen together, in the same chair, on the same evening.

Unlike the two camps fighting online, I am actually willing to change my mind. That is the only antidote I have found.