I agree. Unfortunately, after someone has dropped hundreds or thousands of dollars on exotic cabling it becomes more of a bragging rights and face saving issue. So you'll be hard pressed to get any of those folks to say "er...it didn't really make any difference."

I remember reading a few reports of some of those MIT network boxes having either nothing inside or having a simple Zobel network to make flaky amps more tolerant of potentially bizarre impedance mismatches. However, try convincing someone who dropped a few grand on a set of speaker cables that it would be fun to open the little box at the end, possibly damaging the "bling" effect. Google is your friend.

Best,