Professional monitors rated lower than consumer products in blind sound quality tests.

Evidence

The other surprise was how poorly many of the professional monitors were rated, compared to the consumer products that had been included. Remember, this was a rating of sound quality, not loudness capability and power handling—separate issues. Two engineers commented that they had never heard better sound in their lives than some they heard during the evaluations. But other engineers were upset because they had disliked their favorite monitors and insisted on a retest using their own master tapes. This was done and the results were the same. When they saw the measurements, and had them explained, there was acceptance, but it was yet another example of habituation. Humans are good at adaptation—normalizing unusual things. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 162

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier chapters on listening tests and blind evaluations, and to the general finding that habituation biases subjective preference.
• CANDY: A nice conversation fact: studio pros judged blind tests preferring consumer speakers over their own professional monitors, and retesting with their own tapes gave the same result.