a great take on big$ cables

Serus: How do you know they don't sound the same? How do you know you're not imagining a difference where none exists? The answer is, you don't know, and you can't know unless you compare them blind. So if you want to claim they sound different, you have to invent and carry out some sort of blind test (since you insist the ones we have are bad) in which you demonstrate that you really can tell the difference. We're waiting.

Pabelson:

you have to invent and carry out some sort of blind test

You got it... A long term test...

How do you know you're not imagining a difference

You can measure differences (how about 0.25% difference?) in THD between the two and still won't be able to tell the difference in a conventional DBT with one minute clips. What do you think?!

The answer is, you don't know, and you can't know unless you compare them blind

So, when (not if!) you fail the above test you will sell your main gear and listen to a boombox for the rest of your life, just because you arbitrarily decided that "you can't know unless you compare them blind"? The emphasis is on arbitrary, until I see a conclusive research that shows consistent statistical correlation of DBT to sonic perception.
Without that, you are making an arbitrary decision that the particular method is a good indicator. I'm looking for the science here.
Go back and look at the roots of scientific evaluation. Even Einstein's theory of relativity had to wait many years for "official" proof, until someone could measure the effects of gravity on light. We tend to simplify and take things for granted, but that is not scientific. What's scientific is for one to ask why isn't reality in agreement with Newtonian mechanics and dare say that the speed of light is constant, risking ridicule by his colleagues.
You can ignore what your brain tells you based on what seems to be an incomplete or insufficient test data. That is not science, even though it includes scientific methods. I'm sorry that I don't know the answer, but I do know what to ask. You don't!
You seem to accept it that someone with X years in the audio industry "gotta know" more than what your own ears tell you. With that approach we wouldn't have an atom (which nobody could see at the turn of the twentieth century!) and would be still teaching Greek geometry instead of Calculus in our schools (Newton was "blamed" to be insane with his definition of infinitesimals...)
Dare to question!

Differences in copper or silver should be relatively small, as Mr. Russell's website shows. Their sonic impact should be subtle.

But my ears tell me that with many cables there is an immediate and not very subtle impact on the sound (I don't need any double blind testing to hear this). To me, that means that these cables are not just wires, they are designed to have a sonic impact. Cable designers want to achieve a certain effect (ie, "silky smooth" or "natural-sounding bass"), and combine materials with cable geometries and passive circuit elements to get that effect. In other words, the cables are designed to be filters to produce certain effects.

For myself, I want to spend the money on the active circuits. If a cable changes the sound, I don't want it. I use what other people may think are crap cables, but you know what? They don't have any sound at all, they let me hear the amp and preamp and speakers, and most importantly the music.

Someone should make a little $100 box that implements a tunable band-pass filter to put in the interconnect lines. I bet that you could make such a box with some knobs that would let you make your interconnect sound like "silver" or "copper" or "quantum equalized equipotential polarized dialectric" cables. Zip cord plus a box like this would be as good as any $15000 cable.

On the other hand, I plan to audition Transparent cables on the advice of a friend. Through their extensive R&D, they may have found ways to make my system better, and that's worth listening to.

Where to begin, Serus? Just because you don't know the science doesn't mean the science doesn't exist. The study of human hearing is over 150 years old. Audio is not some brand new, revolutionary theory that requires confirmatory tests no one's imagined yet. Audio is old hat, much of it borrowed from other fields. And the way human hearing works doesn't change based on the faceplate of the gear you're listening to.

One thing that science definitely does know is that "what your ears tell you" can be wrong. If you can't accept that, then there is no reasoning with you. Believe what you want to believe.

The study of human hearing is over 150 years old

Well then, inside the scope of human--and planetary--history, this gnat's fart of a research period ought to be enough cause to question our young-punk conclusions. We are mere infants when it comes to understanding our own functioning. So enjoy the music, or not.