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RE: Silver does indeed react to magnetic fields differently from copper...

"and it's resistance to electron flow is 8% more efficient than copper {whether that could be heard in a DAC is anyone's guess}"

Certainly, it is true that the conductivity of silver is somewhat higher than copper, as you say. But now consider in practice what that might mean. Let's say the copper output lead in the DAC has a resistance of 0.1 ohms, and that the input impedance of the audio amplifier is 20K ohms. Now compare with a silver lead, where the resistance is say 0.09 ohms instead. Can anyone seriously imagine that the difference between the two cases is going to be audible?

Well yes, I can answer my own question; some people apparently can seriously imagine that the difference is audible. I was assured by DanL that he was being serious with his claims that "different wires have different sonic signatures," etc., etc. However, I think the emphasis here has to be on the word "imagine." Humans can very easily imagine that they experience all kinds of bogus phenomena. Not with any dishonest intent; it can all seem real enough to the subject. There are endless examples of this in the arena of optical illusions, and similarly there are lots of examples with aural illusions. The brain can easily be tricked, and it can easily interpolate with what it expects to see, or to hear.

In the face of such "unreliability" of the observer, one has to have more trustworthy ways of trying to establish whether a claimed perceived phenomenon is real or not. Only by such means can one distinguish real science from voodoo science. One way to gain insight is by measurements, with apparatus. Clearly in the case of a silver wire versus a copper wire, there will in principle be a tiny measurable difference between the two. We don't really need to make the actual measurement in this case, since we can calculate the effect of the change. The voltage divider is 0.1 ohms vs 20 Kohms in one case, and 0.09 ohms versus 20 Kohms in the other. Any effects will be utterly negligible, and way below the threshold of audibility.

Maybe, though, someone will dispute the assertion that this is below the threshold of audibility. In that case, there is one other way of objectively testing their claim; the double-blind test. It is useless to do anything other than a double-blind test. If the person knows which setup uses the copper wire and which uses the silver wire, then of course it is only too easy for them to convince themselves that they hear a difference, if they are so minded to believe such things. The only way to avoid the risk of confirmation bias inherent in "sighted" comparisons is to do a proper, rigorous, double-blind test.

The evidence from double-bind listening tests is that humans are remarkably bad at distinguishing between configurations that they claimed were obviously different when they had the benefit of knowing which was which.

In the case under discussion, I would be absolutely confident that no one would be able to distinguish between the copper wire and the silver wire in a double-blind listening test. I doubt that anyone has actually conducted such an experiment, and some people will be happy to continue with their beliefs that different wires have different sonic signatures, even in the DAC example under discussion. It would be a harmless (if somewhat expensive) delusion, but a delusion nonetheless.

Chris

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