In article , Eiron wrote:
As an interconnect test I soldered up a short adapter (4cm) with a male phono,
two female phonos and a jack plug.
This allowed me to take a mono source and feed it directly to the left channel
of a sound card, while also sending it through the interconnect under test to
the right channel of the sound card.

I've been wondering why so few people seem to have thought of this. I did the
same thing myself with some fancy cables lent to me by a colleague who seemed
convinced that they made his system sound wonderful, but with one of his cables
in one channel and one of my own bog-standard ones in the other channel, the
"stereo" image of a mono source was pin sharp in the middle with no splashes to
the side whatsoever. I listened using loudspeakers and headphones with the same
results.

It was only because my colleague is a professional sound mixer that I even
entertained the notion of bothering to try this at all. I've no idea what could
have happened when he swapped cables to make his system sound different, and it's
rather worrying that someone doing his job might be "hearing" differences that
aren't there. Apparently even the people that mix the original material are human
too, so where does that leave objectivity?

Rod.