Sure: Among audiophiles, who have also discussed "for decades" the "sonic effects" of a vast amount of pseudo-scientific "effects" (often barely that). There is literally no pseudo-scientific idea that an audiophile hasn’t come up with, that didn’t have some portion of audiophiles saying "He’s right! I can hear the difference!" That’s because audiophiles generally don’t employ methods that control for their imagination.So it's all conveniently down to a nicely worded, broad generalization.
That’s understandable to some degree due to practicalities involved, but many audiophiles go further to even deny the problem even exists.
Back to moving cables changing the sound: In the pro sound world, who use vastly more cables than audiophiles, no this does not come up. That is beyond using cables along well known parameters. I’ve recorded in, visited, and worked in many pro studios and not ONCE has this worry of "moving cables will change the sound" been either a problem or even raised as a problem. Because generally, there doesn’t seem to be good reason (beyond subjective audiophile hand-wringing and an appeal to golden ear hearing) to think it’s a problem.In the workplace you describe, you're just duplicating a product, not listening like you would at home. As long as it sounds OK and meets the standards, you can then can it and sell it.
If significant sonic changes occurred to cables simply because they were moving, guitarists would have had to stand statue still while performing on stage lest their sound keep altering. But they don’t do that, because they don’t have to. Guitarists (and other musicians) have used cables that writhe around on the stage or recording floor as they move and no engineers stress about "sound obviously changing" (even with unbalanced cables) due to "cables moving" (so long as the cables can stand the stress of movement, aren’t landing on power cables or whatever). Look at photos of Led Zeppelin or any other band performing. Look at the cables snaking all over the floor. The horror!In a live performance, I can't imagine how one would know, let alone ascertain, how a performance would sound before, after, or while moving. Talk about a red herring. Why didn't you include a revolving stage while you were at it?
And when recording, engineers/musicians move cables around all the time and NO ONE says "We’d better wait a few hours - or days - for the cables to "settle" again or we can’t get the sound right. That nonsense doesn’t fly in virtually any pro setting. It’s the provenance generally of hand-wringing subjectivist audiophiles, for good reason.Has it ever occurred to you that the signal is getting through during the recording but it's with the playback at home in a settled environment that one can hear it? Two completely different settings.
All the best,
Nonoise