No, the scientific tools needed to investigate cables are available secondhand for a few hundred bucks. High quality gear, too - instruments that originally cost thousands and is still highly sensitive. Anyone can buy them and learn to use them.
It stands to reason that - if such measurements were possible - then manufacturers would be using them to better the competetion. It doesn't need to be argued that a cable manufacturer would love to steal the business from competitors, right?
So why not spend maybe a thousand bucks on test gear, nail down the differences, optimize the product, then use that data to beat the crap out of the competition?
This research doesn't have to be done in a university or private lab, does it? A business could - with a modest investment - give themselves the ultimate competitive advantage. Look at the contests between AMD and Intel. They certainly publish facts and figures to gain a sales advantage. So do all car manufacturers, you
find the same with washing machines and microwaves.
But never with cables.
In addition to besting the other manufacturers (with a potential payoff in the millions), wouldn't a manufacturer want to silence the critics? I would. If people were calling me a fraud, I'd pick up some gear and shut them up.
So why hasn't this happened? Cables are not new - the fight has been brewing for over 30 years. In all those decades, not one manufacturer has taken these steps to silence critics, beat the competition and rule the market.
Why not? Aren't millions of dollars sufficient motivation? Don't people like to prove themselves right? Doesn't every business want to crush the competition?
The only reasonable conclusion is that there isn't a scientific basic whatsoever for cables. This is an eight or nine figure industry. With that kind money at stake, it doesn't make sense not to test and analyze. This happens in every legitimate field - there is a lot of money at stake.
If you contend that there is a manufacturer that actually tests their cables and has solid research, please let me know. I would be happy to contact them and sign a lifetime NDA and noncompete agreement to see their research. I'd be happy to eat crow and tell everyone that the product is legit. I will buy their product, as well, to show good faith.
Backing this up, you won't find any serious hobbyist research into cables. Look at pretty much everything else. You can find DIY amps and speakers backed up with measurements and data. Stuff anyone can reproduce at home, too. Audio aside, you will find serious amateur bodies of work for astronomy, radio, steam engines, lasers, and much else. People take hobbies seriously and a lot of pros do side projects to satisfy their own interests, then publish that. Look at Pete Millett. He works at TI, but does terrific hobbyist work that he gives away for free.
So, why isn't there someone like that for cables? How come there aren't cable designers working, for example, in sensitive data transmission cables, who dabble in audio cables on the side? Maybe someone who has access to a top flight lab and tests his cables after hours to fine tune them. It stands to reason this sort of thing would go on. That it doesn't should tell you a lot about the cable industry.
About the unknown forces, if they're real, they would show up in all electronic applications, not just audio.
If materials, dielectric, cryo, the tears of a virgin Tibetan monk, etc. actually made a difference, you'd find mysterious little differences in microprocessors, electric motors, electronic sensors, and so on. Performance would be slightly different from what was expected. And someone would have nailed down those differences by now. Or probably 60 or 70 years ago. Radio and TV circuits are a fair bit more delicate than audio, and someone seeking a competetive advantage would have noticed and applied it as a blunt weapon in the marketplace. But that didn't happen.
What really bothers me is this quasi-argument that because science doesn't know everything, then cables must fall into the unknown category. Another way to put that argument is that if we don't know everything then what we do know is not true.
That's bullcrap. It is another way of saying that everything is true because nothing is knowable. There's been something like 130 years of scientific research into electricity. Those at the beginning had no idea what they were dealing with. They developed their understanding and built tools and theory from direct experimentation.
Today, there is a very good understanding of what happens. To say that it should all be disregarded because not everything is known is intellectually dishonest.
Further, to make that claim because someone wants to sell a $15 bit of wire for $300 is nothing less than fraud.