Buster Mudd wrote:

Before & After "tweaks" would be to
measure the acoustic output of the complete sound system in the room.
It does no good (other than to assure some smug self-congratulatory
backpatting amongst the naysayers) to measure the electrical signal at
the output of a $200 interconnect cable & show that it is identical to
the electrical output of a $4 interconnect cable; the tweakophile who
claims he heard a difference heard it connected to the rest of his
audio system in his listening room through his ears, *not* through
some direct electrical connection to the cable. Perhaps that $200
cable interacts bizarrely with the rest of his components, causing
them to perform differently? If so, one would be hard pressed to argue
that difference is not a measurable difference. Time Domain
Spectrometry and FFT can map some fairly refined acoustic phenomena,
so why not measure the sum total net difference in acoustic output of
a sound system, both Before & After the application of a "tweak" &
compare the results?

Buster, you are wrong here, if there is any measurable difference at the
output of the system, it will already show up at the output of the
interconnect. The whole system works at exactly the same operating point and
the single components will multiply their transmission functions. It is like
6x5= 5x6= identical. So no matter where you tweak, the difference will be
there in the chain after the tweaked component and will go on being there
exactly alike (as long as the system is linear) down the chain until the
output.
If you have applied several different tweaks, the final output will be
exactly the product of each individual one and will be measurable after each
changed component.
Your argumentation is not valid, it is governed by your belief and utterly
unscientific.

--
ciao Ban
Bordighera, Italy