can i use my headphones to judge IC neutrality?

that is correct- as an update, i spoke to Stan Warren who lives here in town, and i'm going to audition his homemade cables- now this is going to get interesting- he charges $50 as well but he cryos his cables- anyone had experience with this?

I did this very type of test when I was trying to decide on some Taralabs RCS Air 3's. The cable ran from my Meridian 508-24 to the Sonic Frontiers Line 2, which then fed my headphones: Grado RS-1. I was quickly able to differentiate between cabling. The previous writers have made some excellent points: 1) that the results via headphones may not exactly match a full system response 2) that this type of test is of dubious value if the headphones are run out of the CD player directly. Having said that, I felt that this stripped down sonic system got to the heart of the detail of the cable a bit more directly than a full system test, which has more layers of gear. I'll say again that I was comparing cables, not trying to ascertain some mythical benchmark of "neutrality". I also discovered that this combination sounded so good as to make me weep. I'd have to spend a lot of money on better power amps and speakers to match certain qualities that the RS-1 can deliver with a good front end.

I hear enormous differences when changing interconnects between my cd player and the energizer box of my Koss ESP-950 electrostatic headphones. While the changes heard may not be the same on my living room rig, I think the very revealing headphone system lets you hear the true nature of a particular cable. The difference between the Monster M1000 and the DHLabs BL-1 Series II was incredible. Every change I've made into my headphone system has been audible - including power line conditioners.