Trust your ears

[MadCow]

On 6/18/2021 at 1:59 AM, botrytis said:

I remember going to a listening test of high end Cables. The designer was there and described what to hear from the newer cables as compared to the previous generation of the cable.

 

I'm curious if anyone has done the opposite of the above?

 

e.g. have a person describe what to hear from one set of cables as compared to another, then pretend to fidget at the back of the amplifier but never actually swapped any cables, and record the responses/results from the audience? - i.e. reproducing a similar situation as the OP.

 

I imagine, on a larger scale, that this test could be done similar to how vaccine trials are done - in half the test group, an actual cable swap occurs and in the other "placebo" group, no actual cable swap is done. Though I'm no statistician, I'll leave it to more qualified people to determine how to interpret any results from such an experiment.