Quote Originally Posted by Tony_Montana
Well, members at CA do it all the time

As Mtry mentioned, rapid switching is very effective way to distinguish subtle changes between cables as it will take memory coloration out of picture. I believe rapid switching is even more reliable than DBT testing (I know Mrty will disagree with that) as in DB testing, memory still does play a part.



That is true, but most of the time speaker placement effects are not subtle at all and often dramatic. And one can forecasts what type of effect speaker placement will have on the sound so as to pay close attention to it. For example, when you placed traps around your room, you were paying very close attention to bass notes to see if its effects are improvement or not.

But for cables, not only effects are subtle, but one can not participate ahead of time what type of effects it will have on the sound

Personally, I suspect that a scientifically proper cable DBT has never been reported. Probably one has never even been conducted. Therefore, claims and statements made by both sides are mainly mental masturbation.

E-stat explained in a recent post why cable companies don't bother to conduct scientific DBTs, and no one else seems to care enough to do so.

Audio (as opposed to home entertainment and background music) has always been primarily for those who have a dedicated listening area with two speakers properly placed in relationship to a single sitting position. Audiophiles are those who are passionately interested in music AND good home reproduction, to the point that their approach to electronic home reproduction of music is very much at variance with the general population. Audiophiles are people who sit in front of their two speakers for hours on end the way most other boobs sit in front of TVs. Because of the serious nature of their listening habits, audiophiles are naturally prone to seek improvements in their systems, where most people don't care because their systems are primarily for background music, and hiding all equipment, cables and speakers is the primary deisign consideration for their systems.

The vast majority of audiophiles have always made decisions based on what they perceive to make improvements in their systems that were worth the cost of these improvements. They care about how their own system sounds to them - they don't care about the science or lack of science in back of what they do. Moreover, they make their decisions consistent with the way they listen - sighted and non-scientifically.

If these kind of people didn't exist, there would be no Audio industry and virtually no audiophiles. Companies such as Levinson, Rowland, Krell, Audio Research, MIT, Transparent, Audioquest, Conrad-Johnson, Vandersteen, SoundLab, etc would never have come into existence and this site would not exist if audiophiles took the scientific approach the few stallwarts on this board seem to demand.

Let me make myself perfectly clear. I do not believe anyone on this board or on any audio board has ever really dealt with audio DBTs in a valid, scientific manner. There are difficult statistical issues involved. In addition, the validity of tests is dependent upon the expertise behind the tests. The required expertise is not engineering. Rather it comes more from psychologists. And as far as I can tell there are virtually no people who possess the degree of expertise in the proper disciplines that would be required to set up, hold or opinine on valid blind testing as applied to cables (or for that matter all other components) who ever post on the internet.