Fair enough Todd but you have to have the same microphone for the test and the same source if not how can you make a meaningful comparison between cables? so you need at the very least a cd player or some recording played back thru a speaker because in a live situation you can not get the band to play the same song twice exactly the same way so the results are then not worth much. I mean if I am going to listen to a pair of speakers and A/B them I want to hear the same track on both sets of speakers of course at different times. So you need a prerecorded source in order to make sure that what the mic captures is exactly the same so that you will know what differences the cables made in the first place right? I know what your saying about emf and emi I agree 100% that these things effect sound. They do but if we just want to listen to the basic difference of a cable dont we at least need the same exact source and same exact mics in the same exact position so we can know for sure that if there are differences its the cable that is making the changes not the fact that its a new song or a new mic position? That's All I have ever wanted to say about this subject I know science is not what we are about we are about using our ears. But I can make an objective decision when you have two different pairs of mics or different mic positions or different sources.... Can you? if so you have better ears that I do. I cant I need to hear the same song with the same exact setup in order to know what the differences are with 100% certainty. And if we are going to do tests dont we want to be a certain as we can before we lay down our hard earned money. Look I am not saying good cables dont make a difference that would be stupid what I am saying is can we really tell between a nice star quad and a super high end cable? and if so why not do a simple test that puts this to bed once and for all? then all the people who dont believe will... Sales will increase and everyone wins right?
I'm not saying I have better ears than you Chris, I'm just don't agree that the type of testing that has been done is useless, nor that the testing you seem to be proposing is perfect. I don't really think any testing we can do will be both perfectly valid (with only one variable changing) and perfectly comprehensive. So I'd vote to do more testing, more types of testing, and testing in different environments.
As I noted in the other thread and as Shawn has noted above, more data points can help us make judgements. If we do lots and lots of pairwise tests, even though each individual one may not be perfect, we can start making judgements. For instance, if we do 100 of these pairwise tests, and in every test come to the conclusion that the rig that always uses Cable X always sounds harsh on the high end and anemic on the low end, and the comps using rigs that always use Cable Y always sound sweet on the high end with a full, tight low end, we can reasonably conclude that Cable X sounds harsh and anemic and Cable Y sounds sweet and tight. Otherwise we have to attribute these differences to just be random coincidence since all the other variables (mics, location, recorders, etc) were random over the course of the 100 tests. And if everything were random, then sometimes randomly we wouldn't hear the rig that used cable X to sound harsh, yet it always did.
Long story short, I'm not arguing against the tests you propose, and they may in fact be better on a number of fronts. But no test will be perfect, so folks should just do their best and keep the comps coming.
