I won’t say there can’t be an audible difference, who knows there still are paramaters in play we didn’t measure (correctly).
There also is this thing though that our ears fool us. Or actually it’s not our ears, they merely are the sensors, the transducers ... the real hearing takes place in our brain. And our brain fools us, greatly. For one, it fills in the gaps, our hearing is trained on how songs and music usually ought to sound, just like we can read a sentence where all vowels are left out prfectly well (w cn rd a sntnc whr ll th vwls r lft t prfctl wll). Our ’hearing’ is also greatly influenced by visuals, and by expectations. Google for the McGurk effect.
So ... yes ... when you just shelled out $4000 for new speaker cables, that look thick and fancy and that have nice gold plated connectors on them (I never use connectors, the less interconnects the better), you WILL here a difference ... just because you just told your brain there SHOULD be a difference.
And of course, if the first listening was a bit disappointing, you now hear a difference after some hours of ’running in’. Because the experts told you they sound better after ’running in’, your brain now expects a difference. Who knows what exactly happens with the molecules and atoms during running in? The interesting notice is statistically there’s a 50% chance they sound worse ... but no, they always sound better!
And of course they again sound better after you placed your cables on the $400 floor spacers to avoid cable vibrations. Ever thought of using $2 kitchen sponges for that?
It all becomes much more difficult with a blind A/B test.
There also is this thing though that our ears fool us. Or actually it’s not our ears, they merely are the sensors, the transducers ... the real hearing takes place in our brain. And our brain fools us, greatly. For one, it fills in the gaps, our hearing is trained on how songs and music usually ought to sound, just like we can read a sentence where all vowels are left out prfectly well (w cn rd a sntnc whr ll th vwls r lft t prfctl wll). Our ’hearing’ is also greatly influenced by visuals, and by expectations. Google for the McGurk effect.
So ... yes ... when you just shelled out $4000 for new speaker cables, that look thick and fancy and that have nice gold plated connectors on them (I never use connectors, the less interconnects the better), you WILL here a difference ... just because you just told your brain there SHOULD be a difference.
And of course, if the first listening was a bit disappointing, you now hear a difference after some hours of ’running in’. Because the experts told you they sound better after ’running in’, your brain now expects a difference. Who knows what exactly happens with the molecules and atoms during running in? The interesting notice is statistically there’s a 50% chance they sound worse ... but no, they always sound better!
And of course they again sound better after you placed your cables on the $400 floor spacers to avoid cable vibrations. Ever thought of using $2 kitchen sponges for that?
It all becomes much more difficult with a blind A/B test.