I just got around to reading this. You made a number of whopper arguments throughout this post, and the general tenor I got from your allegory—the one about man’s understanding of the behavior of falling apples “pre-Newton”—is that anecdotes are sometimes the best we’ve got until science comes around to explain things. And since you’re posting it here, I assume this allegory is supposed to pertain to this cable question—as you say, “that’s how science works”.@beagleman
Imagine a primitive man thousands of years ago sitting under an apple tree and apples start falling down in front of him. He tells his friends that they all fall straight down. No, they say, that's anecdotal, prove it. Anyway, the leaves fall slower and usually sideways. He's not going to wait thousands of years for Newton to explain gravity and wind resistance. He's certainly not going to invent differential calculus as a precursor for explaining the gravitational force. More likely, he'll eat the apples and enjoy them, perhaps put a net under the tree to catch them so they don't bruise or split.
The history of mankind is full of anecdotal experience waiting for an explanation. That's how science works. If you ignore anecdotal experience, progress explaining the physical world will come to an end. Most people pre-Newton would simply have avoided walking under apple trees should apples land on their head, but there would have been a few natural philosophers asking the more fundamental question : why they fell from the tree at all.
I have no skin in the game. My last component system was balanced and I used Mogami 2534 analogue XLR cables at about £15 each. But if people say they hear a difference, good for them, let them enjoy it, I'm sure one day it will be explained one way or another.
I'm no scientist. Galen appears to describe various reactive effects between cables and components. He may be correct that scientifically they do have an impact, but whether and how they may be audible is another matter.
I appreciate your efforts to educate us here, but the problem is that we’re long past Newton, and the scientific knowledge and relevant instruments to assess this cable question already exist—Amir demonstrated this to us elegantly at the start of this thread. So we aren’t dependent on anecdotes to speculate about differences in cable performance, and even if we were, anecdotes are not science—they’re never science. The thinking behind your argument is what led early man to throw rocks at the sun, and angry villagers in Salem to burn women at the stake. So your assumption that “this is how science works” is unsettlingly false.
I do agree with one claim you made in your argument though, and I highlighted it in bold up there for you towards the end of your comments. Nevertheless I hope you do keep coming back here, because you will learn something if you keep an open mind.
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