Do you believe in Magic?

Thanks Dave and Nonoise for your comments. I appreciate your open mindedness.

Al - You are the Voice of Reason, and your comments reflect that. There are most certainly confounding variables, and you identified some of the big ones. It is completely possible that the effect was attributable to some other variable, or was merely in my mind. I have no particular investment in being correct about this.

Having said that, the effect was startling. I have seldom had that kind of experience with the many tweaks I've tried over the years. And when I have experienced dramatic improvements from tweaks, there was usually a good explanation (e.g., add a reclocker and sound quality improves in ways associated with jitter, add felt to the speaker baffle and sound quality improves in ways associated with diffraction, etc.).

Your suggestion to A/B the pigtails, in order to replicate the results, is of course what should be done. Unfortunately, I cannot A/B this in my current system, because the pigtails are attached to custom crossovers that I built for my speakers, and the crossovers are located inside a sealed cabinet in the wall between the equipment closet and the listening room. So there is no way to quickly A/B, let alone blind A/B.

So I plan on doing the A/B'ing in a friend's system, which should be sufficiently resolving to either confirm or disconfirm what I experienced in my system. I will also ask him to help me blind A/B. I will report back with the results.

Like Alice said... curiouser and curiouser.

Bryon

"So I plan on doing the A/B'ing in a friend's system, which should be sufficiently resolving to either confirm or disconfirm what I experienced in my system. I will also ask him to help me blind A/B. I will report back with the results."

B C. - would you say your friend's system is as resolving as your system when you first tried the ERS paper? Or perhaps as resolving as your system after you got your system to the point where you heard the ERS paper hurt the sound. And if the blind test is negative what will your conclusion be, pray tell?

Geoff -- Yes, I would say that my friend's system is at least as resolving as mine is currently, and possibly more so. If I cannot discriminate the presence/absence of the grounding pigtails in his system, I will conclude that Al may have been right when he suggested that what I heard the day I put in the pigtails might be attributable to some other variable.

From your use of "pray tell," I gather that you are going to say that I cannot conclude anything of the sort, because the pigtails may have some effect in my system but not in his, due to differences in equipment, ac power, acoustics, barometric pressure, solar flares, the state of my electrolytes, etc. etc.

Maybe you were implying something else. It's hard to know when you don't finish your thoughts.

bc

You finished my thoughts quite well, actually. IMO it can be rather difficult getting to the nitty gritty truth of these rather bizarre tweaks and glad to see someone is trying to do so.

Perception is a poor choice of words. We know what we hear. We do not perceive what we hear.
Granted there are many factors that have an influence on what we hear. Mood being the most critical.
I believe an ABA test is the true test. Most are very familiar with the sonics of their system. Any change should be evident in opnes system. The term "Magic" may be just the wrong word to use. There is something going on. If it cannot be measured with the conventional means we have today then what is happening ? Only our own ears with our own system can we make any kind of judgement of such.
It is a personal thing. One size does not fit all. How can one say another is wrong ? It is their perception and frankly that is all that matters. If I believe such is happening then by golly it is. How we arrive at that conclusion is what is moot. Perception is in the eye of the beholder. Chew on that.