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Once again, magically expensive items are only different in your mind

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mouser:
Slashdot reports a study which shows that even elite  musicians can't tell the difference between what-are-believed-to-be legendary hyper-expensive instruments and modern instruments:

http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/04/elite-violinists-fail-distinguish-legendary-violins-modern-fiddles

This study can join the long list of studies showing that wine experts can't tell the difference between a $5,000 bottle of wine and a $5 bottle of wine.

When it comes to appreciating these hyper expensive items -- the perceived quality is all in your head.  If you think you are experiencing something super expensive, you tend to experience it as being significantly better.

Break out of the cycle -- find alternative way to perceive quality other than money!

Target:
seems like we might be hardwired to make those sort of decisions :-[

Dan Ariely on YouTube


Sure throws a spanner in the works of any value judgements you might be trying to make ;D ;D ;D

There's also a book - Predictably Irrational.  Note that I'm not affiliated with either the author or the publisher in anyway

TaoPhoenix:
Slashdot reports a study which shows that even elite  musicians can't tell the difference between what-are-believed-to-be legendary hyper-expensive instruments and modern instruments:

http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/04/elite-violinists-fail-distinguish-legendary-violins-modern-fiddles

...

When it comes to appreciating these hyper expensive items -- the perceived quality is all in your head.  If you think you are experiencing something super expensive, you tend to experience it as being significantly better.

Break out of the cycle -- find alternative way to perceive quality other than money!
-mouser (April 07, 2014, 06:22 PM)
--- End quote ---

Hmm, I think the thread title here might be a little ...heh ... "tinged" with just a dash of snark. I think the general consensus is that "properly made modern violins are getting very very good". It's one of those where you have to be really sure exactly what questions are being asked. Rather than reinvent it all, I'll give you a blog by one of the members and the Slashdot thread.

http://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/20121/13039/
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/14/04/07/207236/elite-violinists-cant-distinguish-between-a-stradivarius-and-a-modern-violin

Edvard:
I came from a working-class family who weren't poor, but there were many things we did without.  My father would fix up old things rather than pay for new, even if the time spent was more valuable.  I didn't have a brand-name pair of shoes until I had moved out on my own.  Every dollar spent was weighed against how long the purchased item would last.  I believe this instilled me with a strange sense of worth, in which I do believe in paying for quality, but only to a definite, red-line point.  The line in the sand becomes deep and wide when you cross over from "quality" to "luxury" and I will not cross it.  $3000 audio cables?  I'll use coat-hanger wire first.  More than $1000 dollars for a trusted name-brand electric guitar?  I bought a "budget" model of the same brand in pieces at a local Goodwill for $3.99, it cost me less than $30 to upgrade the hardware and now I've got an instrument I would have drooled over when I was a teenager.  However, things like this are obvious, and the law of diminishing returns becomes more evident the more salesmen it takes to convince you to part with your hard-earned cash.  I don't like salesmen.  They make me itch.

That said, there have been times where I paid for quality, most recently when I bought my wife a Vita-Mix.  She was having health problems, and needed a good blender to make raw vegetable juices with.  I took their advertised health claims with a grain of salt and focused on the 2hp motor, the legendary durability, and the 7-year warranty.  THAT is what I paid for, but we got more in return.  We would have worn out 3 or more consumer-level blenders by now, and the results would have been mediocre in comparison.  This is a tangible, demonstratable fact, not a 'perception of value'.  
...Which is why I almost blew my stack when my son bought the most expensive tires available for his beater truck and said 'yes' to the extra 15 bucks for '(something)-izing' which is supposed to make the tires last longer and grip better.
Yep, sure.  You betcha.  :huh:

Deozaan:
That said, there have been times where I paid for quality, most recently when I bought my wife a Vita-Mix.  She was having health problems, and needed a good blender to make raw vegetable juices with.  I took their advertised health claims with a grain of salt and focused on the 2hp motor, the legendary durability, and the 7-year warranty.  THAT is what I paid for, but we got more in return.  We would have worn out 3 or more consumer-level blenders by now, and the results would have been mediocre in comparison.  This is a tangible, demonstratable fact, not a 'perception of value'.  
...Which is why I almost blew my stack when my son bought the most expensive tires available for his beater truck and said 'yes' to the extra 15 bucks for '(something)-izing' which is supposed to make the tires last longer and grip better.
Yep, sure.  You betcha.  :huh:
-Edvard (April 08, 2014, 12:34 AM)
--- End quote ---

I got a Blend-tec blender a few years ago and experienced similar results. It was awesome.

The tire thing is called striping or siping or something like that. They cut slices into the tires which allows them to flex a bit and adds more surface area so they can get better traction. Or at least that's what I understood of how it was explained to me. I'm not sure I've ever heard them claim it makes the tires last longer (and I'm not sure how slicing a tire up would increase its durability).

This seems like it would fit well in this thread:

When news first broke of Neil Young's plans to serve up high-resolution listening to audiophiles last year, we wondered how he'd get folks to splurge for a $400 player and re-buy their existing libraries. Sure, six to 30 times the resolution of MP3s looks great on paper, but will we really be able to hear the difference? The rock icon says yes, and it's because there's nothing that's currently available that even comes close to Pono. Young says that existing audio formats are unable to adequately present a full range of tones, so he "decided to create an ecosystem that provided exactly what the artist created."

[ . . . ]

He's super clear about one detail: PonoMusic isn't offering a new file format or standard. What the repository will serve up is FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files that range from CD-quality 1,411 kbps (44.1 kHz/16 bit) up to 9,216 kbps (192 kHz/24-bit), depending on what's available from that album's master recordings. This means that listeners will have access to the highest-resolution version of an album that exists and the player needed to do them justice.-http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/07/neil-young-on-pono-interview/
--- End quote ---

I'm a skeptic, that's for sure. Especially because it seems to contradict itself. In one sentence it says "existing audio formats are unable to adequately present a full range of tones" and shortly later it says "PonoMusic isn't offering a new file format or standard. What the repository will serve up is FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) files."

I'm pretty sure that FLAC is an existing audio format. :huh:

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