Maybe. Pricing is certainly a big part of it. And many people haven't had an opportunity to audition an aftermarket power cord. There are so many different ICs, speaker cables, and power cords out there, you could make auditioning these things a full time job. And even if they all offered money back guarantees, such a money back guarantee doesn't usually cover the cost of shipping.
So if, like most people, you have a limited amount of disposable income, and even less time than you have income, then it might actually be useful to have a skeptic like Frank do (double or single) blind trials to see if he and his friends can tell the difference between cable A and cable B.
A few years ago I read an article about how most cola drinkers can easily tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. That is, if you give them two cups, one with Coke and one with Pepsi, and you ask them to taste and tell you the difference, then people will often nail this.
But if you put down 3 colas (with one repeated, or say with RC Cola), and you have them take a sip, one after another, then the whole thing falls apart. Most people don't have a sufficiently developed memory and vocabulary for the sensation of taste to sip 3 things and tell you which is which.
What is Frank's methodology by the way? Here are two possible ones:
1. I am going to play the same song using two different cables for you, and you can ask to listen to the first cable or the second cable as often as you like. If you can consistently identify a certain cable as cable 1 and the other as cable 2, then success!
2. I am going to play music for you and switch (or not switch) between two cables randomly. You must identify which cable is which after every switch.
If the results of cola testing experiments are to be believed, then it seems like trials that look like 1 more closely emulate the Coke versus Pepsi experience rather than the Coke versus Pepsi versus RC Cola versus Walmart Cola etc.
