I read the HiFi+ review that David12 mentions. It seemed to be a well set up DBT. There were three judges, a high end audio salesman, an esoteric cable company owner and the magazine's test engineer. The last was a total disbeliever in cables. They all ended up prefering the same set of cables (set being interconnects and speaker wire all from the same company and group within the company's line). The one they preferred also happened to be the one preferred by most of the editors of the magazine. Was it a perfect test? Was honestly reported on (don't underestimate the importance of the objectivity of the writer)? I can't say. But it did open me up to the possibility that cables can make a difference. I recently bought my first pair of esoteric IC's. I had read two reviews that made them sound like they could make the change that I was looking for. Within the limits of my ability to objectively evaluate them without any of sort of blind testing I would say they made a big, and positive difference. I really like the sound much better. I would also judge that they did this by acting as low pass filters. So transparent they are not. What's new? I think we all understand that the objective of esoteric cables is not transparency. But then people buy tube equipment precisely because it distorts the sound the way they like it to be distorted. My next step is get out my real time analyzer and see if I can measure a change in the frequency response of my system. It was pretty flat before I started. It might be interesting to measure the flatness at each end of the cable.
