Just because we my friend did not conduct a blind test or measure the differences doesn’t mean the results don’t exist.
Please be careful about using strawmen.
REMEMBER I wrote: This is not a claim that ’therefore you and he were not hearing any difference.’ It is merely pointing out that just believing it, and claiming it, doesn’t advance the conversation at all.
That’s the Amir way of things, if it doesn’t measure, it doesn’t exist.
No, his way of things is that if it’s audible it’s likely measurable. And if you can’t demonstrate something measurable, or at least hearing under conditions controlling for bias, then the good evidence is lacking for the claim. That’s a far more careful and reasonable view than the way you just expressed it.
The before and after were SO extraordinarily different, anyone who has good hearing could tell.
And yet...your engineer friend, strangely, didn’t have the impulse to do any engineering - e.g. measuring to find out what explains the obvious difference the cable made. Maybe he didn’t want to. But if that’s the fact, once again we are left with no more evidence than "I’m Sure I Heard It."
I have in fact tried a variety of expensive AC cables, Shunyata for instance. With one of the cables I could swear it obviously changed the sound of my system - "darker" and "more lush." I didn't even know if I still liked the sound of the system with that AC cable. But I also knew, despite my quite strong subjective impression, that we can fool ourselves. So an engineer family member helped me do a blind test between the Shunyata against the standard $15 AC cable. The result, once I didn't KNOW which cable I was listening to, was no sonic difference. There was no "darkening" or "more lushness" in the sound to indicate one sounded different than the other.
This can be humbling stuff, and a real lesson about just how strong imagined subjective impressions of sound can be. Most audiophiles haven't had that experience, but it would be nice if more did.
unless you think he and I and our friends who now enjoy his system are fools and self-delusional,
Again, this is a strawman. Falling to sighted bias doesn’t make anyone a "fool" it makes them human. As I said anyone, no matter the training, is vulnerable to imagining differences.
It’s fairly amazing how this fact about human nature just doesn’t seem to ever land for some folks.
It may be an ego-bruiser to accept "maybe I was actually wrong, maybe I DID imagine a difference." But sometimes it takes putting aside pride to learn something.
fleschler, please understand I don’t mean to imply any hard feelings or claim I’m Absolutely Right about all these issues. I’m just trying to rationally defend a certain viewpoint. You and I share much more in common regarding audio than this little disagreement. Cheers.