Interesting comment – the price/value/sonic-quality conflation is real, as is the sunk-cost psychology. I like the "audio jewelry" framing — if someone is buying for visual aesthetics and symbolic value, they’re explicitly *not* making a *sonic* claim and empirical criticism that they don’t care about sound doesn’t touch them.
As we know, the audiophile market sells visual looks and sonic performance, and most buyers want both. For the buyer, visual, symbolic, and sonic justifications tend to collapse into each other — especially after an expensive purchase, when motivated perception kicks in hardest. The behavioral psychology literature, including Kalchev, would predict exactly that. So if a buyer is using the "audio jewelry" rationale, they’re intellectually honest when it’s a genuine, prior motivation. Often, though, it functions as a retroactive justification — which puts it back inside the trap the study accurately describes.
None of this is really blameworthy on a human level. The issue on an audio forum is that many assertions are offered as if they were straightforward testimony about sound — meant to advise others about sound — so if someone is arguing from mixed motives, it will come across as bad advice, possibly wasting others’ time and resources, and advancing falsehoods about sound. There are worse falsehoods to tell, of course, but on an audio forum, it gets singled out.
Regarding tubes, I understand that a tube reaches operating condition within minutes of applying power is true — thermal stabilization is quick. But I thought that tubes do change over time in ways unrelated to thermal equilibrium. For example, cathode emission stabilizes over the first hours of use as oxide layers settle; getter activity can shift; mechanical components (the internal structure is surprisingly delicate) may take time to fully stabilize under repeated thermal cycling. These are acknowledged in tube manufacturers’ documentation and in electrical engineering literature. The expected degradation curve over a tube’s lifespan is also well established, which presupposes that tubes change with use by definition. How much of this is audible? That’s a harder question! But I’ve heard my tubes sound worse before they failed.
On tubes:
https://jacmusic.com/html/EE/EE12-Burn-in/V2/EE-12-about-burn-in.html
https://www.effectrode.com/knowledge-base/secrets-of-the-tube-alchemists/
