can i use my headphones to judge IC neutrality?

Viggen, what I interpreted the poster to be saying was that they wanted some sort of benchmark to judge "neutrality" by. I assumed the way such a test would work (although it wouldn't actually succeed), would be to listen to the disk through the phones attached to the CDP, then compare that to the sound of the same disk played back through the system first with one IC, then with the other. The objective would be to determine which IC, in the system, sounded most like the supposed "neutral" benchmark set by the headphone reproduction. So the IC's would not be listened to at all through the headphones.

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.