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Was the recent cable test result wherein approximately 80% of the participants heard a difference and described it consistent with my original observations, due to a variable other than the cables (leaving aside that we did note the junction box variable as a possible cause)?

That is the contention of a rather condescending individual who emailed me from The University of Texas.

His blog site is called "Musings, Thoughts on Science, Computing, and Life on Earth".

Under the heading "AUDIOPHILIA" (which I assume he considers a disease of some kind), he begins his post by writing: "Humans are hard-wired to find patterns. Even when there are none."

What this fellow claims is that if you precisely line up the two approximately 43 second file waveforms on Audacity, you will discover that File A gets to the same point towards the end of the clip 43 milliseconds faster than it does on File B. That he claims causes an audible pitch change that might not be heard as a pitch shift but will be heard as brightness.

As he points out, that's a 0.1% difference in speed. What is a 0.1% difference in speed? It's a 1000Hz test tone reproduced at precisely 33 1/3 and one reproduced at 1001Hz. And that's what we heard. Can that be? He claims that corrected the speed difference makes the files indistinguishable

He writes that the "wow and flutter" of my turntable caused it to run faster for File "A".

The only problem here is that while File "A" reached the same end point 43 milliseconds ahead of File "B", if wow and flutter was involved, it's more likely that the end point variation was caused by "wow and flutter" and not by an actual consistent variation in speed and that therefore the turntable did not really consistently run ".1% fast".

In other words, the speed remains at 33 1/3 but the minor speed fluctuations between the beginning and end of the file would cause the end-time difference. These wow and flutter events would be random within the two files, with the exception of low frequency 'wow' possibly caused by minor record eccentricities.

If, as he claims, lining up and overlaying the files makes them identical wave forms wherein no discernible differences can be noted, then the Continuum Caliburn is an even better turntable than I thought! In fact his observation would demonstrate that the turntable has pretty much "0" wow and flutter and that perhaps there's yet another variable involved. Or am I missing something?

He claims that if you correct for the speed difference, the files become sonically identical. But, is it possible that the "faster" file isn't really "faster" but simply ends 43 milliseconds sooner because of random wow and flutter variations during the course of the 43 second or so files and that actually the two are running at the same speed? Were that the case and were it possible to perceive a .1% speed difference as "brightness" or lack thereof, slowing down one of them would obscure the sonic difference by dulling somewhat the sound.

In other words, I'm not 100% convinced that even if his observation is true (I haven't lined up the files), his conclusion is correct. But then he goes into this 100% convinced that cables cannot possibly alter the sound. Read for yourself.

By the way, as you might imagine, my response to his post—because of tone, not substance— was (as he put it "testy"). So then after baiting me with his tone, he complained about my "testiness." That's how these folks roll.