I'm with Tones ....if its not fun were probabley missing something.

Shrink ...but you heard the difference,  good bad or ugly!

I'm still not certain that blind testing has any part in listening to music and have always felt that these tests are flawed. Though I'm not clever enough to pinpoint  why.

Where else in life do you blind test items ? 

When you take a car for a test drive ?

When your looking for a new house ?

buying fruit and vegatables?

Going to the cinema ?

Chosing a  girlfriend/boyfriend ?

visiting the dentist?

choosing a holiday?

can anyone think of one?

It seems to me, that as in most of life you need to develope your skills in those area to gain expertise before you become sucsessful at it on a regular basis.

I still prefer the old and tried method of adding a peice of kit to your system and seeing what difference it makes.....if you can't hear anything then there are a whole range of reasons why not.

This does not mean cables make no difference, it could means -

1, the listener can't hear it due to lack of ability or a hearing problem

2, the listener doesn't want to hear it

3, the kit is unable to resolve the difference,

4, the kit is working perfectly and the item is no better than whats all ready installed

5, other external factors are effecting the test, ie room accoustics

6, The cable has no effect

I'm certain that there are many more reasons people can think of.

What always leaves a sour taste is when individuals insist they are right and everyone else is wrong.....

Its strange most people who can hear cable changes can accept that some people can't, but this is not recipricated. So we end up with another cable debate [row].

To me this is very odd, I can't hear certain things, like for instance the effect of freezing cds. But I don't go round stating that this can't work, its just I've never been able to hear it. 

Lets look at another example..... the green pen  effect.......

[I can see all those eyes roll upward ]

This seems to polarise opinion even more than cables, and for me offers an insight into problem that can arrise.

Everyone I have shown this effect to has been able to hear a difference however small. But when I have let people borrow the discs  and listen to them at there leisure....

Theyoften come back and said they can't hear anything.  A quick listen on their gear  shows that the changes are there, but for what ever reason they are missing them.  If I then say listen for the start of track 4 and play  both the treated disc and the untreated disc in quick sucsession, the common reaction is that they then can hear the effect[but not allways !].

I'm certain Taz won't mine  me saying that when we listened to this effect last thursday. His reaction was one of amazment, to the point where he sat up till 2am painting the edges of his disc. He later told me he was  listening to details he had never heard before on some of his favorite discs.

I think we may be approaching the question of mains cables from the wrong angle ....should we rather be asking why can some people hear the differences rather than wondering why some people can't ?  If we take the non-hears out the equation

you should be able to get a cleaner statistical analysis of the effect of a group of cables have. Lastly,  if you use a suitable large population size, rather than a few mates* your results may be more meaningful.  This is not meant to belittle the efforts of all who took part, its rather to offer advice for anyone who may want to try something similar in the future.

rather than a few mates* .......is not meant in a derogatory way, just an example of the small sample size.