[meat01]

I did the test, I listened with my own ears and came to my conclusion. Any more good excuses why they sound the same?

Any good reasons why ICs have to be engineered and cost $100s of dollars? Any reason why there has to be 3 feet of highly conductive material between components, when are numerous feet of resistor and capacitor legs, lead solder, brass and stainless steel connectors in the audio path already?

What should my paper clip ICs sound like? Muddy, lifeless music? The electrons are flowing through wire, capacitors, transistors, solder connectors. They don't care what the material is as long as they can flow.