Why haven’t we heard the same excuses that we hear when electronics dont live up to the hype?
A. It must have been defective
B. ASR tests to a standard that doesn’t make sense, the manufacturer knows better
C. A single test doesn’t prove anything
D. ASR didn’t check with the manufacturer to explain the performance
Am I missing any other excuses?
It's mostly an issue of how cables fail. In normal environments, 99.95% of cable failures result in a broken or intermittent connection. Such a fault can't explain a $1400 cable behaving the same as a $1 cable. The only real exception to this would be if the cable were crushed, which is obvious upon visual inspection.
In exotic environments, I've seen cables that failed in other ways that *could* make them behave in bizarre ways, usually as the result of electrical abuse. In almost all cases, this shows up in a TDR test.
For electronics, it's a different issue, and it is a valid concern given the way this site works. Most gear is sent in by members, so in a sense, it's exact condition is unknown. Who knows what it's been through. I've seen my fair share of amplifiers that "sound fine" but are
very screwed up inside. Worse still, someone with an agenda (perhaps an engineer from a competing company) could
very easily modify a commercial amplifier (to worsen its performance) and send it in for testing.
As a general rule, if it meets specs, I'm not worried, but if it does
not meet published specifications, that is (in my book) reason for further investigation.
