Cable auditions - Hard Work?

Washline: The bottom line is this: Without doing blind A/B testing, your emotions and the fact that you spent big bucks on power cables will influence what you are hearing.
A/B testing is not enough.

Are you willing to bet you will be able to tell the difference between your expensive power cable and a cheap one in a blind test, consistently over 50% of the time?
I am willing to bet money you can't.
Anyone in the Northern NJ / NYC is more than welcome to stop by and take me up on my bet...

Here is the power chord double blind test link folks:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_11_4/feature-article-blind-test-power-cords-12-2004.html

Power cord test is would be slightly different from IC test.
Your power tranformer and power source varies every time you flick the power switch. The amount of current/voltage draws from your power source varies more than the output of the cd player or preamp.

It is actually harder to do power cord A/B test than IC.

As far as IC test goes, I disagree with Yuri777. The difference can be huge. Among our friends, we have test over 50 IC. Unless your system is resolving enough, they also sound different regardless of price. Even the RCA plugs sound very different.

But then again, you are entitle to have subjective view.

"Washline: The bottom line is this: Without doing blind A/B testing, your emotions and the fact that you spent big bucks on power cables will influence what you are hearing.
A/B testing is not enough."

Pretty tough to judge people's ears, yuri. Better to stick with your own. It is an organ after all and every bit as fallible as the next.

Guys, don't take this personally, but unless you have done Blind ABX tests with your power cords and interconnects, it is all subjective.. you know what is playing, and you may think you hear a difference instead of really hearing one.

Stereophile magazine even did a blind A/B test with different high end amps, and most of the subjects couldn't tell the difference between them!
yep, entire amplifiers, not ICs, not Power cords..

Just a few days ago i was testing the digital outputs of my Musical Fidelity Tri Vista 21 DAC against the analog outputs of my Yamaha S2500 when playing a CD, using my transformer-based passive preamp as an A/B switch.
I couldn't tell them apart, and i doubt anyone could.
The DAC really makes a difference in units not having a great analog stage, but once you start to get in the high end of things, is hard to tell the difference.
While the Trivista 21 is one of the best DACs made, a Stereophile Class A unit, i was kind of dissapointed the analog stage of the S2500 sounded just as good, with no upsampling..
I am going to do further tests / blind tests with different CDs to see what i can hear..
Cheers