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Re: Several comments…

> there is no evidence whatsoever that he has owned or listened to any of the products he ridicules.

We are in full agreement here.

My point was that neither he, nor I, nor most people with an interest/understanding of audio and/or the audio industry need to to listen them to know they do not meet the unsubstantiated claims for sound improvement. It is no different to going to the local market and seeing designer goods on sale for, apparently, 10% of their retail price. Most people do not need to inspect these goods to know they are not real. Instead they rely on their own knowledge of how things work.

> I came to it by listening and I have reasonable confidence in it.

Despite this, I have far more than reasonable confidence that they do not work (but not absolute because there is a minute possibility there is something extreme about the situation in your room) even though I have not heard them. I have this confidence because I have studied and learned a model of how electrical devices work. This model has been proven to be accurate in my work over the last few decades and it is the same model used by scientists, engineers and teachers in research, industry and schools throughout the world and for well over a 100 years. This really is something one can have confidence in because of the massive amount of evidence supporting it and none, that I am aware of, indicating that it is wrong for normal electroacoustic devices.

In addition, the chances of your having performed an experiment where a subtle audible difference could be reliably distinguished is negligible. Of course, I am assuming you are claiming a subtle improvement here rather than a "night and day" improvement which would be something else.

But do not worry, I do not have a switch box to sell or believe that careful unbiased experiments should be compulsory for every consumer before purchasing kit. Nonetheless, if comparing audio tweaks is part of your audio hobby it is something to consider if you are interested in whether the tweaks work or not.

> All of the 'well informed' people you refer to who have not felt the need to test this product have obviously never tried them, or they would effectively have tested them, and their 'information' often comes solely from pages like the one in the link being discussed here, which provide no scientific comment whatsoever on this product so they're not particularly well informed.

I doubt the page referred to is considered a source of reliable information by anyone including the author. I suspect the only intention was to amuse.

Instead, the "techies" would rely on their technical knowledge and the "arties" would rely on common sense having listened to what the "techies" had to say and having been to the local market.

> At best scientific reasoning will strongly suggest that I shouldn't hear anything but conventional scientific reasoning has often been wrong and revised during the history of science.

Utter nonsense. After Newton and the establishment of a sound mathematical basis for formulating and testing the laws of physics there have been incredibly few revisions of established laws. These revisions were to include observed wrinkles in extreme cases usually involving the motion of stars and sub atomic particles but not audio cable stands.

> In this particular case, please share with us all the reasoning you refer to which suggests that I shouldn't hear anything.

You have not significantly changed the electrical properties of your cable, the signal from your amplifier, the properties of your speaker or the acoustics of your room. Without changing one of these and changing it enough to be audible you will not reliably here a difference.

Of course, it is possible for all of us to hear all sorts of unreliable differences due to signals to our brain from sources other than our ears influencing our perception of sound. With the possible exception of a glass wine, I would suggest almost none are going to help with the appreciation of music.

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