TJG - I'm sorry if it wasn't clear in my last post, but it was an excerpt from a discussion on this subject that I found on the internet. Those were not my words, and if you read the copyright on the bottom of the post, you can see it was written by Chris Sommovigo, a cable designer. I just thought it was a pretty intersting observation.

As far as a good ABX test that is unbiased and performed by those who appreciate the nuances of audio reproduction, I just got finished looking through a back issue of Home Theater Magazine in which a very good test was performed using speaker wires and interconnections from 8 different speaker manufactures. It was written in the November 1998 issue of Home Theater Magazine, Vol. 5, Number 11, by Brent Butterworth and Jeff Cherun, and I will try to either scan the pages into my computer and put it in a PDF file for you, or rewrite it and post it at another time. The test in the issue most clearly defines what I personally experienced when I performed similar testing on speaker wires. As a matter of fact this test was inscentive for me to go out and perform my own test, because I wanted to hear the differences for myself.

In the tests that I performed, I was changing between 6 different SPEAKER WIRES of different manufactures and guages. I think I only changed the actual interconnection cable between the SACD transport and Pre/Amp once during my testing, and then tested all the speaker wires over again. To reiterate, I was using a Krell Showcase Pre/Pro, Krell Theater Amplifier Standard amp (Set @ 4 ohms, 400 watts per channel) with a Marantz reference SACD player, through Martin Logan Odyssey electorstatic tower speakers with no subwoofer , listening to 2 channel SACD and CD music. I ensured that the system was level matched and did not adjust trim once during the entire session, to ensure accuracy. I did the best I could to make the test a blind one by having the salesman, a friend of mine, tape off the ends of each cable, and write a number on each piece of tape, so that I couldn't see the maker of each cable while hooking them up. It was only after the session was finished that I removed the tape and wrote the manufctures name next to the corrosponding number. My wife, my brother-in-law, and I were the test subjects. Would this not constitute an ABX double blind test?

I personally have very keen hearing and have been able to pass every yearly hearing test I have for my work with flying colors. I am not trying to promote myself as some kind of superhuman freak, I'm just stating that I have extremely sensitive ears. My wife sat through the test and was unable to hear hardly any difference in the wires I was testing ( granted she has some hearing loss in both ears). Her brother-in-law, on the other hand heard almost all of what I was hearing in the sonic differences between the wires, though we were split on which ones we prefered the most. I am just trying to convey that this entire debate is based totally on personal opinions. And as my dad likes to say, "Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one!"

I have had very little preference for specific cable manufactures, and in fact use quite a plethera of different brands in my home system, and honestly they are fairly cheep. So the thought that I am some seudo-religious zeelot blindly following one manufacturer down the road to hell is pretty silly. I try to keep an open mind and take the time to listen for differences in sound reproduction and quality in different products, including wires.

My intensions in responding to this thread were to reinforce Merc's statements with my own personal experiences, not to be drawn down into firing flaming posts at one-another. I know how very personal an issue this is to many people, especially myself, and never intended to try and force anything down anyone's throat. I mearly was stating my personal experiences in this area.

So in the immortal words of Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"