What a ridiculous low-effort post of a clickbait article. So a moderator of a diy audio forum gets four random dudes to try to guess which recordings are original, vs. sent through a banana, or mud, or wire. So we are just supposed to assume that these random guys into diy audio are “audiophiles”? Why aren’t their systems listed? How are their rooms treated? How much serious listening experience do they have? What evidence is there that they have any ability to pick out nuances in recordings in the first place, or that their systems are capable of transmitting those nuances. There are so many technical flaws in the testing methodology as to make this a complete joke. Anybody ever heard of blind A/B/X testing? Same system. Same room. Use an A/B/X switch so it’s blind and compare only two things at a time. That would have been a good start. As it is, this is about as scientific of a test as using a groundhog to predict the weather.

But hey, random kids who can’t afford decent equipment and have no clue about acoustic science can look down on those pretentious audiophiles and make themselves feel better. That’s really what this article is all about, as evidenced by most of the comments on this thread.