Metro04 - As an educated EE, I clearly do not have the experience today to begin a scientific or engineering investigation on the matter for which you so very much want definitive answers. But I am not sure we are there yet anyway.
As advanced as our semiconductor and software industries have become, they still fall very short of the ear/brain processing to analyze sounds and therefore music. How and where do we even start to develop processes and systems to identify those sonic attributes that the ear and brain immediately tell us what is the real piano, what is a close simulation or what does not come even close? It's not only frequency or phase response analysis. Music is not this simple to quantify. If Mrtennis or anybody else requires these answers to get confirmation that differences do/don't exist, I suspect he is going to be waiting a long time.
Some of the most brilliant engineers are working on the latest developments of digital systems. And the test equipment for these systems has to be even more precise. And yet, in the final analysis, when I hear digital music, as enjoyable as it can be, my brain immediately tells me something is very wrong. Do we have the ability today to measure and quantify this? And if not, how can we expect the industry to provide a solution sheet with all the answers to explain why I can hear that power cable A affects an amplifier differently than power cable B?
There are events when I can not hear differences between some cables in certain links of the chain; this is good news as it leaves money in my pocket. And when there are differences, the more expensive product is not always the one I prefer. Again, good news as it saved me the expense. But there are times when I discover a cable or any other component for that matter that brings on more abc or xyz; it gets me that much closer to the musical performance. It's a win situation in any of these cases.
If we go into the audition with a seeded mind that we will or will not hear a difference, we have to be prepared to accept that the outcome could be different. And this is independent of any survey, poll, testing, etc., done by any other person or group who have documented that cables in fact do or do not make a difference.
I am clearly no self-tauted audiophile. And I am not trying to provide unverified testimonials either. I simply shared my experience that this closed-minded enginner let his ears be the factor vs. a printed technical report to determine that such differences do or do not exist. If one person can hear that differences exist, then they do. And that person could very well be a third party.
As an engineer, I know how easy it is for data to be "presented" in a way that would cause anyone to initially come to any conclusion. And how many of us have access to the facilities to prove or disprove such claims? We rely on others to do this. So this too is all based on faith.
As Mrtennis reported, "hearing is believing, either i hear a difference or i don't hear a difference. at this point it's an anecdotal report which cannot be verified". But Mrtennis, as any of us who are just another citizen of the larger collective, reading a report is believing, and often neither you nor I can verify such. Thank you, but in the case of audio cable differences, I have more faith in my own ears.
John
