A butt-load spent in cables - how much improvemt?

Mothra, I'm sincerely curious as to what you mean by "well documented that DBT's are unreliable themselves". Unreliable at doing what?... because the only thing a double-blind test (as applied to audio) claims to do is determine whether a person can distinguish a sonic difference by hearing alone. Participants in the test are given ample opportunity to identify the difference between conditions 'A' and 'B', and that's all the test aims to determine.

Now I realize that some people will confuse the question of auditory perception with that of explanatory physics, which is an entirely different issue. When listening tests fail to identify phenomena that can be measured with other instrumentation or mathematical models, this is no different than a motorcycle "failing" to get you to the moon.

Can you give an example of how a double-blind listening test would be unreliable at its intended purpose (determining how consistently one can identify an audible difference)?

no cables, no components, no stereo systems are neutral.

a trained listener can detect coloration after an extended period of exposure, with suitable sources, to any stereo system.

it is better to admit that all equipment is voiced, intentionally or otherwise, as it is sold at a price point.

Some stereo systems, because of their components, are more neutral than others. A trained listener is a person who attends live acoustic performances. If the stereo can reproduce a cello and a violin convincingly, then that is a trustworthy indication it can get other musical entertainment accurately as well.

The closer the system can approach neutrality, the more evident most cabling sucks. The majority of expensive cabling is heavily jacketed with synthetics. On a super revealing system, that insulation floods the signal with a static mess. I can prove that.

Highly obscuring cables are for what ales your source, preamp, amp, and speakers. Get those items right, and rid yourself of the need to cable roll.

jim,

Sigh. This is why i stopped posting at rec.audio.high-end. It seems the reductionist camp and the "everything is magic" camp never tire of arguing.

Unreliable and being level matched certainly sometimes.

People tend not to name what they are hearing if they don't understand properly what they are listening for or how they are listening for it. This doesn't mean they do not hear something, it only means they cannot identify it.

I remember there was a DBT test a friend of mine who is a mastering engineer participated in some time back, where people were asked to identify dithered and non dithered material. Most people couldn't not identify the sound of jitter or could not say what it was. However, when the sound of the jitter was turned up so one could hear the way it sounds and then turned back down to its original "inaudible" level, most people could tell the difference in the DBT because they knew how to indentify the sound they were listening for.

I don't have a problem with DBT's myself, I do them when I can to listen for differences in gear.

The history of DBT's has been spotty though. They have showed us apparently, that no amps sound different, that vinyl does not sound different from cassette , etc., etc. So, one can say that these were poorly conducted, but at some point something everyone knows, like that there is a discenable difference in the sound of amplifers, has been "proved" wrong by a DBT.

I don't particularly care whether people swear by them or don't and I am also suspicious by nature about tweaks, cables and other things that seem less than scientific. Since my job is in audio, I am constantly testing for audible differences. However, this process has a lot more wiggle room than determining that a motorcycle can't get you to the moon.

Mothra,

Appreciate the intelligent response, specifically the example of turning up the jitter effect and then returning it to its normal level. These discussions need more elucidation of that sort, and less ad hominem.

While we must consider whether or not the listener knows what he's listening for, I wouldn't say that the phenomenon you describe undermines the credibility of double-blind tests, but rather more clearly defines what they actually achieve. In other words, DBT's never proved that amps sound alike, but only proved that the test's participants couldn't readily identify the difference.

I guess we should always qualify the question of audible difference in terms of whose ear(s) we're considering. The general public wouldn't be expected to differentiate between cables, but those individuals who CLAIM they can tell the difference (like those in your example who've already heard the jitter turned up) should have little trouble discerning reliably in a blind test.