DBT is the only way to prove that there is a difference to hear. In the absence this kind of verification, there is no proof. This is just a plain hard scientific fact.
It has also been proven many times over that your brain can fool you into hearing differences that do not exist in reality.
The audiophile world is rife with anecdotal claims that strain the bounds of credulity.
It is also stocked with self proclaimed authorities who base their authority on their claimed but untested auditory superiority.
It doesn't take much to figure out why some of these authorities would resist a method of verification that can expose a fraud.
If we wish to be honest, we will all admit that there are ridiculous anecdotal testimonials attached to all kinds of things in the audiophile world.
You can regularly find people on audiophile sites who will claim the ability to hear the un-hearable.
You can find testimonials from college kids with a $250 DVD player for a front end and $500 speakers who will tell you that upgrading to $1,000 speaker cables enabled them to hear detail they never heard before, that their soundstage grew to an incredible size and depth, etc. etc. IMO, it becomes rather sad. If we want to help that kid, IMO, we should help him understand that his money would have achieved for him much greater benefits elsewhere in his chain. But, who is going to set that kid straight?
Before we're tempted to chuckle at that kid's testimonial, let's admit that this type of anecdotal evidence is trotted out regularly at all price points.
Now, when someone has claimed that some cable or other piece of gear removed the veil, enabled the listener to hear things never heard before, that the sound stage expanded to immense proportions ---- and then that listener cannot even reliably identify this cable or other piece of gear in a DB A/B test, it's time to call B.S.
DBT absolutely works, but you have to understand what DBT does -- it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that an difference exists in reality.
Without that proof, any claim is unsubstantiated.
That's a hard scientific fact.
So, we travel in a world of mostly unsubstantiated claims and we have to do our best to sniff out the B.S. because if we're honest with ourselves, we know the audio landscape is littered with B.S. land mines and unless you want to be duped into an unproductive and sometimes very costly side-track, your first priority is to hone your B.S. detector.
Having said that, IMO, all this means is that us audiophiles ought to have a little more scientific humility.
IMO, there's nothing wrong with saying, "I think I hear X, but I have not verified it and I could be imagining it."
Or, "to my ears, I think the difference was __________."
Or, "if you can't hear what I hear, it could be that I am imagining it."
Or, "but I didn't level match the components, so there could be other explanations for the differences I think I heard."
Or, "but I doubt I could pass a DBT if tested on this."
All this would do is remove a lot of fake authoritativeness and turn this into what it should be, IMO, a sharing of admittedly flawed and subjective experience between a group of people who are trying to muddle through with unreliable tools which include our ears and brain.
Because if audio memory is too short for an a/b test, it is obviously also too short for any test and every audition is therefore flawed.
Having said all of that, I also have to say that I hate when DBT's are introduced into most discussions because proper DBT with peer reviewed results are just not obtainable in most instances so all it does is short circuit a discussion.
Forget about DBT's and lose a lot of the fake authoritativeness and IMO we'd have better discussions.
Hopefully, right here.