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musicoverall
03-22-2005, 07:51 AM
My cable listening test has been completed. Tonight I find out how I scored and I'll have time this coming weekend to post the results which I will do if anyone is interested.

theaudiohobby
03-26-2005, 03:17 PM
I am waiting for the results of these tests.

musicoverall
03-28-2005, 12:20 PM
I am waiting for the results of these tests.

Sorry in advance for the length of this post.

First of all, I undertook this test not to prove anything to the world but only to arm myself with empirical evidence in the face of all the theory regarding cable sonics, theory that was not in accordance with my own anecdotal experience. With the exception of Markw, I'm not aware of anyone at A/R actually participating in blind cable tests. I'm all for theory and science because they can explain a lot about what we hear and how measurements correlate to sound but, either they don't totally dictate sound or we aren't measuring all the right things... so goeth the subjectivist mantra. I went into this with an open mind, of course believing I would score well but also open to the possibility of my own biases being the determinant for what I imagined was happening.

I tested my reference Cardas Neutral Reference speaker cable against Home Depot 12 awg "zipcord". I originally was going to use 16 awg zip from Radio Shack but was told that my results might be swayed since the Cardas is 8.5 guage. I couldn't find any zipcord in that exact guage so I got as close as I could. Both sets of cables were 1.5 meters in length, so I doubt the guage difference was a factor. A friend switched (or not) the cables each night over a period of 13 consecutive nights. He flipped a coin to determine which cable would be in place on which night. Interestingly, the zipcord was used 8 times and the Cardas only 5... but the coin ruled.

I used music with which I'm totally familiar... well recorded CD's of Bill Evans' "Sunday Night at the Village Vanguard" and Beethoven's 5th Symphony. The former is a jazz piano trio and the latter, obviously, a symphony. I played roughly 1/3 of each disc each night, the first 1/3 on the first night, the second 1/3 on the second, etc. Once I had played both discs in full once, I started over. I did not want to use the same 30 second snippet of music for each test because I felt that if I had to focus too diligently on a cymbal crash or an orchestra passage, there was no point in worrying about wire. The differences, if any, had to be apparent in the same manner as we listen to music... without any undue focus on a portion of the music or a portion of the instruments but by listening to it as a total piece.

Of the 13 trials, 3 of them ended up with me totally guessing. After listening, I found I had no idea whatsoever as to which cable was in use. I scored 1 correct of those 3. For two trials I was reasonably certain which cable was in use. I was only 50% correct. So far, I've scored just 2 corrects out of 5 trials.

However, during the other 8 trials, I felt I was absolutely positive which cable I was hearing. There was no doubt in my mind. I scored correctly 8 times out of 8. My total correct answers were 10, out of the 13 trials. about 77% correct.

77% correct is not the 90-95% that statistics state is required and it is not even the 80% correct that Markw allowed during his own listening tests. However, it's significant to me that when I was absolutely certain, I scored 100%. I can't say why I was incorrect on 3 trials or why I wasn't absolutely certain on 5 trials. Perhaps my state of mind was such that the differences were missed. But the sonic differences were very clear to me during 8 trials and I scored correctly each of those 8 times.

For the record, the zipcord very slightly muted detail which gave me the illusion of "less treble extension" or "more recessed midrange". But the major difference was in imaging/soundstaging. The zipcord sounded "confused" at times, and unable to sort out the positioning of the orchestra. It also seemed to slightly shift the musicians in the trio from their original positions (those positions known due to the liner notes). But remember, these are subtle differences - and not noticeable all the time. Getting 3 incorrect seems perfectly reasonable. I didn't focus on sound during these tests, I focused on music. If I had focused on sound, I may have proven something but my intent was mostly to find out how each cable played music. My test tended to bring ou the same differences I heard under sighted conditions but MUCH LESS NOTICEABLY. Which cable is "correct"? Good question. The Cardas sounded "better" and more accurate but I have no way of knowing if it actually was. I preferred it, plain and simple.

Once again, my tests don't prove anything, not even to me. But I find them to be powerful evidence that there is more work to be done before I can blindly (heh, heh) support theory without listening tests to support it. There's more work to be done when measuring cables, how they interact with other components, and how we humans hear things.

Were there noticeable differences between the two cables? Yes. Were they worth the cost? Well... they certainly aren't worth obsessing over. As you can read, they weren't always noticeable at all! This test served to reinforce strongly that cables should be the last thing someone tries to improve their system. But they CAN improve it. The worth of the investment is a personal decision.

I invite your comments/questions.

shokhead
03-28-2005, 01:19 PM
Interesting. Good job. :)

theaudiohobby
03-28-2005, 02:21 PM
Thanks very much for posting your results and conclusions. :)

mystic
03-29-2005, 12:04 AM
Sorry in advance for the length of this post.

First of all, I undertook this test not to prove anything to the world but only to arm myself with empirical evidence in the face of all the theory regarding cable sonics, theory that was not in accordance with my own anecdotal experience. With the exception of Markw, I'm not aware of anyone at A/R actually participating in blind cable tests. I'm all for theory and science because they can explain a lot about what we hear and how measurements correlate to sound but, either they don't totally dictate sound or we aren't measuring all the right things... so goeth the subjectivist mantra. I went into this with an open mind, of course believing I would score well but also open to the possibility of my own biases being the determinant for what I imagined was happening.

I tested my reference Cardas Neutral Reference speaker cable against Home Depot 12 awg "zipcord". I originally was going to use 16 awg zip from Radio Shack but was told that my results might be swayed since the Cardas is 8.5 guage. I couldn't find any zipcord in that exact guage so I got as close as I could. Both sets of cables were 1.5 meters in length, so I doubt the guage difference was a factor. A friend switched (or not) the cables each night over a period of 13 consecutive nights. He flipped a coin to determine which cable would be in place on which night. Interestingly, the zipcord was used 8 times and the Cardas only 5... but the coin ruled.

I used music with which I'm totally familiar... well recorded CD's of Bill Evans' "Sunday Night at the Village Vanguard" and Beethoven's 5th Symphony. The former is a jazz piano trio and the latter, obviously, a symphony. I played roughly 1/3 of each disc each night, the first 1/3 on the first night, the second 1/3 on the second, etc. Once I had played both discs in full once, I started over. I did not want to use the same 30 second snippet of music for each test because I felt that if I had to focus too diligently on a cymbal crash or an orchestra passage, there was no point in worrying about wire. The differences, if any, had to be apparent in the same manner as we listen to music... without any undue focus on a portion of the music or a portion of the instruments but by listening to it as a total piece.

Of the 13 trials, 3 of them ended up with me totally guessing. After listening, I found I had no idea whatsoever as to which cable was in use. I scored 1 correct of those 3. For two trials I was reasonably certain which cable was in use. I was only 50% correct. So far, I've scored just 2 corrects out of 5 trials.

However, during the other 8 trials, I felt I was absolutely positive which cable I was hearing. There was no doubt in my mind. I scored correctly 8 times out of 8. My total correct answers were 10, out of the 13 trials. about 77% correct.

77% correct is not the 90-95% that statistics state is required and it is not even the 80% correct that Markw allowed during his own listening tests. However, it's significant to me that when I was absolutely certain, I scored 100%. I can't say why I was incorrect on 3 trials or why I wasn't absolutely certain on 5 trials. Perhaps my state of mind was such that the differences were missed. But the sonic differences were very clear to me during 8 trials and I scored correctly each of those 8 times.

For the record, the zipcord very slightly muted detail which gave me the illusion of "less treble extension" or "more recessed midrange". But the major difference was in imaging/soundstaging. The zipcord sounded "confused" at times, and unable to sort out the positioning of the orchestra. It also seemed to slightly shift the musicians in the trio from their original positions (those positions known due to the liner notes). But remember, these are subtle differences - and not noticeable all the time. Getting 3 incorrect seems perfectly reasonable. I didn't focus on sound during these tests, I focused on music. If I had focused on sound, I may have proven something but my intent was mostly to find out how each cable played music. My test tended to bring ou the same differences I heard under sighted conditions but MUCH LESS NOTICEABLY. Which cable is "correct"? Good question. The Cardas sounded "better" and more accurate but I have no way of knowing if it actually was. I preferred it, plain and simple.

Once again, my tests don't prove anything, not even to me. But I find them to be powerful evidence that there is more work to be done before I can blindly (heh, heh) support theory without listening tests to support it. There's more work to be done when measuring cables, how they interact with other components, and how we humans hear things.

Were there noticeable differences between the two cables? Yes. Were they worth the cost? Well... they certainly aren't worth obsessing over. As you can read, they weren't always noticeable at all! This test served to reinforce strongly that cables should be the last thing someone tries to improve their system. But they CAN improve it. The worth of the investment is a personal decision.

I invite your comments/questions.

Perhaps you performed better statistically than you think you did. Other members can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe 10 correct identifications in 13 trials has a p value of of 0.046, meaning there is less than a 5 percent chance your scores were random. I believe results with p values under 0.050 usually are considered statistically significant.

Thank you for doing the test and telling the members about it.

musicoverall
03-29-2005, 05:17 AM
Perhaps you performed better statistically than you think you did. Other members can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe 10 correct identifications in 13 trials has a p value of of 0.046, meaning there is less than a 5 percent chance your scores were random. I believe results with p values under 0.050 usually are considered statistically significant.

Thank you for doing the test and telling the members about it.

Interesting. But I'm afraid I can't correct you! :)

Certainly the guesses were random but I would have bet the farm on the 8 I was sure of.

Swerd
03-29-2005, 08:08 AM
Thanks for taking the time and effort to do these listening tests. Its not so simple as people might think. Overall, your test seems fair and your conclusions are not out of line with your observations.


Were there noticeable differences between the two cables? Yes. Were they worth the cost? Well... they certainly aren't worth obsessing over. As you can read, they weren't always noticeable at all! This test served to reinforce strongly that cables should be the last thing someone tries to improve their system. But they CAN improve it. The worth of the investment is a personal decision.
Some people might quibble with your statement that cables CAN improve a system. I think your results of 77% correct suggests that cables MIGHT improve a system, but it would require a higher percentage of correct answers before you could claim cables CAN improve a system.


I tested my reference Cardas Neutral Reference speaker cable (http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=10620) against Home Depot 12 awg zipcord. I originally was going to use 16 awg zip from Radio (http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=10620) Shack but was told that my results might be swayed since the Cardas is 8.5 guage. I couldn't find any zipcord in that exact guage so I got as close as I could. Both sets of cables were 1.5 meters in length, so I doubt the guage difference was a factor.
I think the biggest variable in your test was the difference in gauges of the speaker wires you tested. You assumed that any difference in 12 and 8.5 gauge would not be a factor

I think that going from 12 to 8.5 gauge might explain the differences you heard. 8.5 gauge wire has more than twice as much copper as the same length of 12 gauge wire. This link http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm explains the relationship between gauge and cross-sectional area of wire in AWG system. Every 3 gauge decrease doubles the wire cross sectional area. Two 12 gauge wires equal one 9 gauge wire. It would have been a better comparison if you bundled two 12 gauge wires together to compare to your Cardas 8.5 gauge wire.
So if anyone out reading this wants to try and repeat your test, they should try to eliminate or minimize differences in the gauge of the two wires.

musicoverall
03-29-2005, 09:54 AM
Thanks for your comments - much appreciated and food for thought.

On the other hand, I've heard on this very site that unless we're talking about 24 awg wire or extremely long runs, differences in guage aren't noticeable in audio applications. Is that information wrong? We're talking less than 5 feet of wire here, much shorter than the average audio application.

Thanks for the "might" as opposed to "can" and you're correct... my error. Might is the word I intended.

As I mentioned, I simplified this test as much as possible by not putting myself on stage with short passages of music played over and over. If the differences didn't come out in normal listening, I determined that they weren't worth it. I rarely listen critically unless I'm auditioning a component... or writing a music review, but that's a different kind of critique.

E-Stat
03-29-2005, 07:00 PM
Sorry in advance for the length of this post...Were there noticeable differences between the two cables? Yes. Were they worth the cost? Well... they certainly aren't worth obsessing over. As you can read, they weren't always noticeable at all! This test served to reinforce strongly that cables should be the last thing someone tries to improve their system. But they CAN improve it. The worth of the investment is a personal decision.

I invite your comments/questions.
Thanks for taking the time to run your trials.

rw

E-Stat
03-29-2005, 07:01 PM
I think that going from 12 to 8.5 gauge might explain the differences you heard. 8.5 gauge wire has more than twice as much copper as the same length of 12 gauge wire.
Well the often quoted "expert" Roger Russell would certainly disagree with your assertion governing such a short cable. In fact he has published a chart that "proves" otherwise. :)

rw

musicoverall
03-30-2005, 04:12 AM
Well the often quoted "expert" Roger Russell would certainly disagree with your assertion governing such a short cable. In fact he has published a chart that "proves" otherwise. :)

rw

Well, apparently most if not all of the naysayer posters around here don't think much of Mr Russell's "proof", despite how much virtual ink they afford him. I've stopped counting how many times on this site I've read the advice that 12 or 16 guage lampcord is perfectly fine for all audio applications unless the wire length is x feet or more- x being something like 25 or 50 feet, I can't recall, but it was much, much longer than 5!

E-Stat
03-30-2005, 05:31 AM
Well, apparently most if not all of the naysayer posters around here don't think much of Mr Russell's "proof", despite how much virtual ink they afford him. I've stopped counting how many times on this site I've read the advice that 12 or 16 guage lampcord is perfectly fine for all audio applications unless the wire length is x feet or more- x being something like 25 or 50 feet, I can't recall, but it was much, much longer than 5!
That's why I smiled. Russell's chart is based upon a simplistic formula he asserts is the basis for audibility. Something like "resistance doesn't exceed 5% of the total impedance of the system". Whatever.

While my JPS Labs cables are 9 gauge, I believe the real answer is based upon more than simple resistance.

rw

musicoverall
03-30-2005, 05:48 AM
That's why I smiled. Russell's chart is based upon a simplistic formula he asserts is the basis for audibility. Something like "resistance doesn't exceed 5% of the total impedance of the system". Whatever. rw

Theories are pleasant things when you don't have to test them. ;)

shokhead
03-30-2005, 06:46 AM
I'll go with a hearing test over any instrument most test anytime. Misicoverall,thanks for the time you spent but i knew you would get ragged on. Some would rather relay on a test that only a dog could hear rather then a real life test.

musicoverall
03-30-2005, 07:45 AM
I'll go with a hearing test over any instrument most test anytime. Misicoverall,thanks for the time you spent but i knew you would get ragged on. Some would rather relay on a test that only a dog could hear rather then a real life test.

I haven't been ragged on at all so far. I'm amazed that Robot Czar, Mash and several others haven't been all over this. Maybe they're just busy at the moment. But I'm expecting a much louder hue and cry then I've seen so far.

RobotCzar
03-30-2005, 12:58 PM
I haven't been ragged on at all so far. I'm amazed that Robot Czar, Mash and several others haven't been all over this. Maybe they're just busy at the moment. But I'm expecting a much louder hue and cry then I've seen so far.

You shouldn't be ragged on for trying to test your beliefs.

As you say, your test really doesn't prove anything. The statisical issue is this: how often can a person be expected to get 10 of 13 trials correct when there are two alternatives for each trial. I don't have the time or inclination to see if 10 of 13 meets statistical significance or not, and I know it won't matter to you.

You fail to say (or I missed it) if the same cable was being used on all 8 trials you were certain of. I find that significant. I also find it significant that you did not feel certain on every trial. I don't buy that you were having an off day at all. To me that is a indication that something was cueing you on the days you were "certain". I assume you could not see the cables, how did you accomplish that? Did you also blind yourself from volume control positions? How did you deal with volume?

The bottom lline is that I think you probably could hear something different for the 8 trials you felt certain about. What you heard was very likely not due to 1.5 meters of different cable.

There is a lot of silliness in the world. Believing that you can hear better than instuments is one of them, it is simply ridiculuous in my opinion--like saying you can see further than a telescope. I really have no hope of changing the true believers in this forum, they have a religious-like belief in what they can hear and science and logic be damned. Fine, ignorance is bliss. But there are a fiew people with open minds who are new to the field and they deserve to know that there are facts beyond ignorant opinion. I salute you for at least attempting to run a test, which is better than most "audiophiilies" will do as they already "know" their answer.

musicoverall
03-30-2005, 01:34 PM
You fail to say (or I missed it) if the same cable was being used on all 8 trials you were certain of. I find that significant. I also find it significant that you did not feel certain on every trial. I don't buy that you were having an off day at all. To me that is a indication that something was cueing you on the days you were "certain". I assume you could not see the cables, how did you accomplish that? Did you also blind yourself from volume control positions? How did you deal with volume?.

No, it wasn't the same cable on all 8 trials. Unfortunately, my notes are at home but I guessed the Cardas as zip twice and the zip as Cardas once - I recall that.

I could not see the cables as they were wrapped in a cheesy homemade paper wrap and taped shut. I used the remote for volume and it doesn't click so I couldn't count them. Believe me on one thing - I had no cues of any kind. There would be no real point in being dishonest since my test won't sway anyone. It was done for my purposes only.

As for "knowing" the answer, well... I still don't. To me, the cables had significant if subtle differences that I picked up on 77% of the time. To you, there's another explanation. The world appears to be spinning on the usual axis, no? :) I will continue to encourage those with open minds to perform their own tests rather than blindly (heh, heh) follow either the subjectivist or the objectivist path. I think that's reasonable given my test results - reasonable, if not necessarily valid from a scientific POV.

E-Stat
03-30-2005, 05:05 PM
Believing that you can hear better than instuments is one of them, it is simply ridiculuous in my opinion--like saying you can see further than a telescope. Who said anything about "hearing" better than instruments? The presumption that a few metrics fully characterize all the audible aspects of reproducing musical content using real world speakers in real world environments is yours.

rw

musicoverall
03-30-2005, 06:13 PM
You fail to say (or I missed it) if the same cable was being used on all 8 trials you were certain of. .

Trial # - Cable - (P)ositive/(R)easonably certain/(G)uess - (C)orrect/(I)ncorrect

1 - Zip - P - C
2 - Zip - P - C
3 - Zip - R - I
4 - Cardas - P - C
5 - Zip - P - C
6 - Cardas - G - I
7 - Zip - P - C
8 - Zip - R - C
9 - Card - P - C
10 -Zip - P - C
11 -Cardas - G - I
12 - Cardas - P - C
13 - Zip - G - C

Now if I were as much of a subjectivist as my set up man, I might claim:

1) I got #3 wrong because I might have assumed the same cable wouldn't have been in place 3 days in a row.
2) I got the Cardas wrong in Trial 11 and ended up with guesses during 2 of the last 3 trials because I was tired.

But I'll leave that to him! ;)

mystic
03-31-2005, 12:08 AM
As you say, your test really doesn't prove anything. The statisical issue is this: how often can a person be expected to get 10 of 13 trials correct when there are two alternatives for each trial. I don't have the time or inclination to see if 10 of 13 meets statistical significance or not, and I know it won't matter to you.


I think the results of the test were statistically significant. I said the following in post #6 of this thread:

"Perhaps you performed better statistically than you think you did. Other members can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe 10 correct identifications in 13 trials has a p value of of 0.046, meaning there is less than a 5 percent chance your scores were random. I believe results with p values under 0.050 usually are considered statistically significant."

shokhead
03-31-2005, 07:08 AM
Does anyone belive if they walked into somebodys home,sat down to listen to a cd and talk to there friend and one main was HD zipcord and the other was cardas neutral ref,they would look at there friend and say,wow,somethings wrong,it doesnt sound right? 100% NO! There is no way in hell. Well,maybe my dog would hear something,maybe not.

musicoverall
03-31-2005, 09:56 AM
Does anyone belive if they walked into somebodys home,sat down to listen to a cd and talk to there friend and one main was HD zipcord and the other was cardas neutral ref,they would look at there friend and say,wow,somethings wrong,it doesnt sound right? 100% NO! There is no way in hell. Well,maybe my dog would hear something,maybe not.

I'd no sooner use my friends audio system as a reference for sonic differences than I would his eyeglasses for a vision test. My problem with the now-famous power cord DBT was that the equipment used was all borrowed. No participant in the test had that system as their frame of reference. That's why I used my own during my listening tests.

RobotCzar
03-31-2005, 11:45 AM
I think the results of the test were statistically significant. I said the following in post #6 of this thread:

"Perhaps you performed better statistically than you think you did. Other members can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe 10 correct identifications in 13 trials has a p value of of 0.046, meaning there is less than a 5 percent chance your scores were random. I believe results with p values under 0.050 usually are considered statistically significant."

You are correct that a p value of .046 is statistically significant at the (generally accepted) aphla of 0.05. You do not indicate how you calculated the value so I don't know if your 0.046 value is correct (as I didn't calculate it). It very well might be correct, but I am reluctant to just take people's word on these things (given the nature of some people who respond in this forum). If you want me to accept your value, please say how you got it. To some extent the statistical result is irrelavent as formal experimental procedures were not followed and the number of trails is very small (13). I don't think statistical significance is extremely important in tihs disucssion as the experimenter was not preprared to accept an alphal level prior to the experiement and we can all agree than 10 of 13 is a positive result in this case.

RobotCzar
03-31-2005, 12:24 PM
Who said anything about "hearing" better than instruments? The presumption that a few metrics fully characterize all the audible aspects of reproducing musical content using real world speakers in real world environments is yours.
rw
I generally don't respond to e-stat as he seems to be operating with a different logic than I use. His comment here is, however, such a clear example of this difference in logic that I cannot resist.

It is very common for people of his persuasion to make up arguments that they can "win" and attribute them to his opponent (this is often called creating a "straw man"). At no time did I suggest that "a few metrics" would charaterize all aspects of reproducing musical content. I never said how many metrics are involved, and I am not referring to musical content because that is entirely in the head of the listener. Music is a subjective human concept the appreciation of which cannot be totally quatitatively characterized. Music is like "truth" or "beauty". It is astounding how many high end hobbiest seem unable to distinguish the concepts of "sound" and "music". Thus, people will describe the "musicality" of equipment, which is ridiculous.

However, a surprisingly few metrics would suffice to characterize sound reproduced by speakers. Audio equipment has the job of accurately reproducing sound (at least that is my idea of the goal). Equipment knows nothing of music and cannot tell sound from music. Music is not a phsyical entitiy and therefore is not subject to physics. Sound is a pretty simple physical phenomina (a 3-dimentional sound presure wave) that can COMPLETELY be described in terms of physical "metrics" (i.e., measurements). Air pressure at a particular location can be characterized by one number (pressure), sound is a dynamic phenomina (the change in air pressure over time). This change requires only one more metric that can be expressed as frequency or wavelength. These two numbers are why a digital sound recording format has only two parameters sampling rate (e.g., 44 KHz) and sample size (.e.g., 16 bits).

Judging sound reproduction requires more data. In this case we are comparing the accuracy of a sound that is recorded (a "live" sound) to one that is reproduced.

Now, as all rationalists, and apparently e-stat, agree that the physical environment of a sound will effect the sound (have a functional relationship to the air pressure measured), so it is very difficult to compare the accuracy of a sound produced in one environment and reproduced in another. (Thus rationalists point to the listening room and speaker location as significant factors of reproduced audio.) Measurements could tell us EXACTLY how accurate a reproduced sound is in a given environment (so e-stat is wrong), but these measurements are complicated and never provided because the speaker maker doesn't know what your environment is. Therefore, some subjectivity (using human ears and opinion) is required to judge the accuracy of speakers in real environments (i.e., we don't have the measurements for most real environments).

Because we must depend on opinion because of a lack of hard data for the wide range of home listening environments, speaker locations, and room contents DOES NOT mean that ears are superior for judging speakers than measurements, they simply are all we have in most cases. This situation also does not mean the measurements we do have are worthless, they still somewhat describe how a speaker performs, just not exactly in every environment.

Ears are very subjective in that human perception is relative and subject to ABEs because those types of ears are more useful for survival. They absolutely cannot be used for the utlimate judgement of accuracy. For one thing, people tend to like "pretty" or "dramatic" or even overly "detailed" sound rather than simply accurate sound. Also, being subjective, what one person "likes" has zero relevance to what another person likes. Accuracy, on the other hand, is objective--it is possible to measure the accuracy of a reproduced sound. I am after accuracy, not what other people like, so I do give preference to objective measurements by instruments more accurate than the human ear and not subject to the mental effects of perception.

RobotCzar
03-31-2005, 12:36 PM
I used the remote for volume and it doesn't click so I couldn't count them. Believe me on one thing - I had no cues of any kind. There would be no real point in being dishonest since my test won't sway anyone. It was done for my purposes only.
It is really important that you understand that being cued has nothing to do with honesty. You can leave a cue or respond to one without knowing that you are. I think you had some misunderstanding on this point previously. You can be tipped by something that you are not aware of. Also, there could be true differences in the sound you are hearing that are due to factors other than the cables, but I admit you did your best to address both of these factors.



As for "knowing" the answer, well... I still don't. To me, the cables had significant if subtle differences that I picked up on 77% of the time. To you, there's another explanation. The world appears to be spinning on the usual axis, no? :) I will continue to encourage those with open minds to perform their own tests rather than blindly (heh, heh) follow either the subjectivist or the objectivist path. I think that's reasonable given my test results - reasonable, if not necessarily valid from a scientific POV.

Yes, I was probably wrong to label you as a knowing the answer (if I did that). You have suggested that you have heard cable differences which does classify you as belieiving that audible cable differences exist, but you have never said you "know" or are certain that the differences you hear are due to cables. The fact that you ran a test is testimony to your uncertainty. Sorry if I implied you felt you knew the answer in advance.

mystic
03-31-2005, 02:02 PM
You are correct that a p value of .046 is statistically significant at the (generally accepted) aphla of 0.05. You do not indicate how you calculated the value so I don't know if your 0.046 value is correct (as I didn't calculate it). It very well might be correct, but I am reluctant to just take people's word on these things (given the nature of some people who respond in this forum). If you want me to accept your value, please say how you got it..

The p value is from the ABX binomial probability table at David Carlstrom's ABX web page:

http://www.pcavtech.com/abx/abx_bino.htm



[QUOTE=RobotCzar]To some extent the statistical result is irrelavent as formal experimental procedures were not followed and the number of trails is very small (13). I don't think statistical significance is extremely important in tihs disucssion as the experimenter was not preprared to accept an alphal level prior to the experiement and we can all agree than 10 of 13 is a positive result in this case.[/QUOTE

I would expect skepticism when the positive results of a test go against beliefs. Of course if the experiment was faulty, the statistical results may be meaningless. What musicoverall did seems sound, but we don't know for sure that unintentional bias was not a factor. Nor do we know for sure that he didn't fabricate the whole thing(no offense intended, musicoverall ). Given the lack of any guarantees about such informal tests, I wonder whether positive results will ever cause naysayers to soften their beliefs.

musicoverall
03-31-2005, 06:31 PM
Nor do we know for sure that he didn't fabricate the whole thing(no offense intended, musicoverall ). Given the lack of any guarantees about such informal tests, I wonder whether positive results will ever cause naysayers to soften their beliefs.

No offense taken - I figured this would come up. All I can say is that since I in my wildest fantasies never assumed an objectivist would be swayed by the slightest iota as a result of my test, the only one hurt by dishonesty on my part would be me. I respect reality and if reality would have shown no differences (or if I had found myself guessing most of the time), I would have been much closer to being a naysayer. As I mentioned before, the best I can do at this point is to encourage others to test themselves. Interestingly, the differences I heard blind were the same ones I heard sighted, just to a lesser degree.

As for naysayers softening their beliefs, I think only a series of positive test outcomes done in the company of others and using an ABX switchbox will accomplish that... or some new measurements on cables! I'm not being glib when I say that but if I were, I would remind myself that I haven't studied physics or electrical engineering for decades and then hear of a group of people essentially denouncing what I had studied.

E-Stat
03-31-2005, 08:40 PM
At no time did I suggest that "a few metrics" would charaterize all aspects of reproducing musical content...

I never said how many metrics are involved
Ok. What are all the cable metrics?



There is a lot of silliness in the world. Believing that you can hear better than instuments is one of them, it is simply ridiculuous in my opinion--like saying you can see further than a telescope.
Please explain the relevance of these comments as to Musicoverall's blind speaker cable test results.

rw

shokhead
04-01-2005, 06:33 AM
If God did a blind cable test,some of you would not belive his outcome. I'm wondering if the ones that have a problem with this test are the ones with $10 afoot speaker wire?

musicoverall
04-01-2005, 09:32 AM
If God did a blind cable test,some of you would not belive his outcome. I'm wondering if the ones that have a problem with this test are the ones with $10 afoot speaker wire?

Well, first it would have to be proven that God exists! :D

$10 per foot??!!??! The zipcord I tested that has been claimed on this very board to be as good as anything cost me less than $10 for 20 feet!

As for believing MY test outcome, no one has that obligation. First of all, I'm not God! :)
Second of all, I could be seen as having an agenda. I expected that rebuttal and I couldn't fault anyone for thinking that way. Also, the test itself was not totally scientific. I didn't set it up to prove anything to the scientific community.

musicoverall
04-01-2005, 09:35 AM
Please explain the relevance of these comments as to Musicoverall's blind speaker cable test results.

rw

I believe those comments were in response to Shokhead's post of 3/30/05 rather than directed at my test. Personally, I believe that while we don't "hear" better than instruments, we "decipher" what we hear and instruments do not.

E-Stat
04-01-2005, 10:14 AM
I believe those comments were in response to Shokhead's post of 3/30/05 rather than directed at my test.
Ah. The reference wasn't very clear. That's why I always include a quote to clarify to whom or what I am responding.


Personally, I believe that while we don't "hear" better than instruments, we "decipher" what we hear and instruments do not.
Agreed. We are able to evaluate multiple criteria simultaneously in reconstructing the musical event. Then we apply our preferences to the outcome.

Finally, my new speakers are enroute from Salt Lake City to Atlanta and arrive Monday. Once I get them broken in and accustomed to their sound, perhaps I'll take the time to conduct a similar test. Or, compare some Kimber Palladian power cords that a friend of mine raves over to mine.

rw

musicoverall
04-01-2005, 11:41 AM
Agreed. We are able to evaluate multiple criteria simultaneously in reconstructing the musical event. Then we apply our preferences to the outcome.


Yes, and of course the question then becomes are we evaluating accurately or not. I struggle with that word as it pertains to audio because I've heard some systems that measured extremely well and that didn't communicate musically. Conversely... etc, etc. It's always the system that I find sounds "best" is the one I deem "more accurate" - which is not technically correct. On the other hand, I've been fortunate enough to hear some master tapes that are both highly accurate and wonderful sounding. The same goes for certain components. So applying my preferences to the outcome is crucial because if I had to spend my life listening through cheap receivers, cheap cd players and cheap cable, all of which measures well, I'd be less happy with the outcome... and I'm not one to grit my teeth while proudly proclaiming that I have an "accurate" sound system.

I'm dying to know how those speakers work out! If I were afflicted with constant "upgraditis", I'd probably find myself a bit jealous! :)

E-Stat
04-01-2005, 07:51 PM
On the other hand, I've been fortunate enough to hear some master tapes that are both highly accurate and wonderful sounding. The same goes for certain components. So applying my preferences to the outcome is crucial because if I had to spend my life listening through cheap receivers, cheap cd players and cheap cable, all of which measures well, I'd be less happy with the outcome... and I'm not one to grit my teeth while proudly proclaiming that I have an "accurate" sound system.
Indeed. While my music listening is certainly not limited to only a small collection of un-compressed, un-limited, un-equalized, un-mixed-down recordings, they do offer a good point of reference using un-amplified instruments.


I'm dying to know how those speakers work out! If I were afflicted with constant "upgraditis", I'd probably find myself a bit jealous! :)
My guess is that you and I are not among those caught up in such. The U-1s replace speakers I used for over twenty years. I hope they will be my last!

rw

RobotCzar
04-03-2005, 07:54 PM
Ok. What are all the cable metrics?

Please explain the relevance of these comments as to Musicoverall's blind speaker cable test results.

rw

Why ask me for justification of my comments? It all seems pretty obvious. I went off about ears vs. instruments because shokhead said "I'll go with a hearing test over any instrument most test anytime." Did you not see that comment? My comments on metrics was a response to your comment (as I said) not musicoverall's test.

Cables do not transmit, transduce, or create sound. They carry an electric signal. It has been known for over a century what metrics are involved. Impedance (composed of inductance, capacitance, and resistance) is all there is that can affect the electric signal in a passive device like a cable. These can all be measured and how they affect electric signal transmission is completely known. Musicoverall prefers a direct test, which is fine, but the fact that the impedance and distortion of cables is very very small compared to the overall impedance of the internal wiring of the speakers (many yards of very thin wire in the voice coils) and the crossover network, strongly suggests that the electrical effects of cables have no audible effect on what we hear.

E-Stat
04-04-2005, 04:29 AM
Did you not see that comment?
I did but since your response was not to his thread, I thought it was to the post in general where it didn't make sense.


It has been known for over a century what metrics are involved. Impedance (composed of inductance, capacitance, and resistance) is all there is that can affect the electric signal in a passive device like a cable.
I would characterize three as "a few".

rw

musicoverall
04-04-2005, 04:46 AM
The U-1s replace speakers I used for over twenty years. I hope they will be my last! rw

I expect my Maggie 20.1's to be it for me. I did upgrade my cables as you know and also my DAC over the last 3-4 months which is more upgrading than I usually do in 5 years!

E-Stat
04-04-2005, 09:18 AM
I expect my Maggie 20.1's to be it for me.
They were my close second choice. I heard HP's nicely driven pair in Seacliff a while back. In some ways, I preferred them to the big Alons. I would like hearing his multichannel rig using 20.1s as mains and 3.6s as center and rears.

rw

Critofur
04-14-2005, 04:17 AM
If God did a blind cable test,some of you would not belive his outcome. I'm wondering if the ones that have a problem with this test are the ones with $10 afoot speaker wire?

Well sure, since I think the very idea of God is, in itself, simply absurd. Just as absurd as some of the marketing BS you read about speaker cables.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that there is such a thing as speaker cable that is audibly more neutral than basic 12 gauge copper speaker wire. With the amount of marketing BS one would have to wade through to find those cables it seems about as easy as finding a needle in a haystack. (realizing that the actual (if it exists) audible difference is probably far less than the pre-disposed bias psychologically induced by hearing claims, seeing the price, or seeing the cables before you listen, or other cues like the self satisfied grin of the person demonstrating the cables to you...).

Listener bias has been well and extensively documented to have significant effect. Talking to someone who has owned a respected speaker company for over 30 years and once had gone from selling audio equipment from his dorm room at MIT to running a chain of audio stores, the only cases where he had known there to be an actual audible (by him, or others) differences (in "double blind" tests) in speaker cables were due to resistance in the cable.

Of course, there are many ways one could make cable inferior to basic copper wire (that is of sufficient thickness to offer a low enough resistance relative to the impedance of the speakers being driven) but superior cable probably only exists in the MINDS of listeners, if they THINK it sounds better, then well, they'll probably be happier with it and being happy is good.

musicoverall
04-14-2005, 04:53 AM
but superior cable probably only exists in the MINDS of listeners, if they THINK it sounds better, then well, they'll probably be happier with it and being happy is good.

Can't argue with that. My ears heard differences, my mind interpreted them, and I'm happier with superior cable. :D

shokhead
04-14-2005, 05:42 AM
Well sure, since I think the very idea of God is, in itself, simply absurd. Just as absurd as some of the marketing BS you read about speaker cables.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that there is such a thing as speaker cable that is audibly more neutral than basic 12 gauge copper speaker wire. With the amount of marketing BS one would have to wade through to find those cables it seems about as easy as finding a needle in a haystack. (realizing that the actual (if it exists) audible difference is probably far less than the pre-disposed bias psychologically induced by hearing claims, seeing the price, or seeing the cables before you listen, or other cues like the self satisfied grin of the person demonstrating the cables to you...).

Listener bias has been well and extensively documented to have significant effect. Talking to someone who has owned a respected speaker company for over 30 years and once had gone from selling audio equipment from his dorm room at MIT to running a chain of audio stores, the only cases where he had known there to be an actual audible (by him, or others) differences (in "double blind" tests) in speaker cables were due to resistance in the cable.

Of course, there are many ways one could make cable inferior to basic copper wire (that is of sufficient thickness to offer a low enough resistance relative to the impedance of the speakers being driven) but superior cable probably only exists in the MINDS of listeners, if they THINK it sounds better, then well, they'll probably be happier with it and being happy is good.

And alot lighter in the wallet to. ;)

Toga
05-03-2005, 11:31 PM
Critofur said something that falls in line with my thinking. Excellent products that approach a similar ideal should converge together to become similar or nearly identical. If we take as an ideal "high fidelity", then a group of really well designed and manufactured cables would be extremely hard if not impossible to tell apart, assuming they approached the ideal closely.

On the other hand, if significant differences were heard, then only a few, one, or no cables would be near the ideal; that of zero signal degradation.

I've noticed a correlation between radical cable designs that reject the bulk current transfer model at LOW relative current densities, and the high DC resistance they present between the amplifier and loudspeaker. By essentially using less cross sectional area, they return to the days of 24GA zip cord, when a typical amp had such a low damping factor the only thing you would lose with highly lossy wire was loudness, and a subtle amount at that.

I believe a major proportion of differences between similar measuring loudspeakers is due to settling time. Two major components of settling time are from the cabinet, and the drivers. Damping Factor interacts mainly with the latter. By discarding DF through "skinny wire", settling time is extended, artificially enhancing acoustical energy output. This is the "bloom" and "warmth" you hear people talk about. Ironically, polar phase and waterfall plots have been with us for many years, but many designers I've met discount their critical importance. Those measurements show the signal being emitted not just in exact synch with the input signal, but somehow time shifted. These same designers also use big drivers with significant cone breakup modes, high mass that resist voice coil control, and a whole kitchen sink of materials that release energy randomly.

The conclusion is that sometimes a "bad" cable, that is a cable that significantly departs from approaching the ideal as much as the state of the art allows, may actually "help out" a bad loudspeaker to sound the way the listener wants it to sound. So some people will forever be trying to tune their systems by swapping wierd cables around, instead of buying or designing decent speakers that address the problems directly.

Ultimately, the argument really is about accuracy and the people who think their biases prefer it, when in reality they are after a certain "sound" that may have nothing to do with fidelity to the original performance. Maybe if we abandoned "high fidelity" as a requirement for enjoying music reproduction, many arguments would simply fade away, because people would stop claiming their ideal is accuracy. (e.g. "I like really accurate sound as long as its from a high 2nd order harmonic producing tube amp, playing through expensive skinny wire, into horn loaded speakers")

Hats off to Musicoverall; he DID where most others just TALK.

musicoverall
05-04-2005, 05:01 AM
[COLOR=Navy]
Ultimately, the argument really is about accuracy and the people who think their biases prefer it, when in reality they are after a certain "sound" that may have nothing to do with fidelity to the original performance. Maybe if we abandoned "high fidelity" as a requirement for enjoying music reproduction, many arguments would simply fade away, because people would stop claiming their ideal is accuracy. (e.g. "I like really accurate sound as long as its from a high 2nd order harmonic producing tube amp, playing through expensive skinny wire, into horn loaded speakers")
]

I struggle with the term "accuracy" because it's used by two sets of people, both of whom use it differently than I. One set of people look at a components measured specs and claim it to be accurate or not. One set of people listen to a component and despite the measurements, proclaim it accurate or not. Until I hear the source (master tape), I'm not in a position to claim a component to be one way or the other.

Consequently, I go for my personal preferences. I've listened to several systems that would be termed accurate because of their measurements and they sounded terrible, even with good recordings. I've also heard several systems that I thought sounded good but not accurate... i.e there was a bit too much added sweetness and the whole presentation just screamed "reproduction"!

I use live music as my barometer and I choose components that most closely sound as MY perceptions tell me is the sound of live music, despite the measurements. This goal has led me to vinyl and SACD, planar speakers, high powered tube amps, and high definition cables. I don't say my way is the accurate way; I say it's my preference. So I'm right there with you on the "accuracy" issue - I don't use it and I don't think the people that do are qualified to do so until they compare the component/system to the master tape.

shokhead
05-04-2005, 05:46 AM
Live recording would have the least accuracy?

musicoverall
05-04-2005, 07:56 AM
Live recording would have the least accuracy?

No, but my perception or aural memory of the live event might not be accurate. I choose components that best fit into my perception of what live music sounds like. Those components aren't always the ones that measure the best.

hermanv
05-17-2005, 01:54 PM
Please repeat your blind listening test with one minor modification; wait one year between each test. This would prove forever that you can' tell the cables apart.

Seriously why wait 24 hours? This makes the test artificially hard. The simple question is: can you (anyone) reliably hear a difference?

Many have and they've documented it. Once any one person pulls this off he is either psychic or -gasp - there's a detectable difference between cables.

All the naysayers are so proud of pounding facts over opinions endlessly but then ignore facts that are easily available with a little research.

Robot_Czar: Resistance, capacitance and inductance are by no means the only technogical properties of cables. No cable carrying time variant signals can be accurately modeled with a single R a single C and a single L ask any communications designer. Besides the distribution of these first order reactive devices, cables also have dielectric absorbtion, they pick up and radiate RFI signals and exhibit thermionic heating. I do not claim any of this explains the differences, it's just that trying to model a complex real world behavior with a simple set of substitutions does not work for cables (or anything else) if you examine the results closely.

The substitution of music with test signals has exactly the same limitations, yes it provides data, no it does not provide a definitive model of how the unit under test will handle real world signals. Like I've stated before, all amplifier designers listen to their designs, why would they bother to do do this? Often the listening tests result in iteritive design changes - huh - didn't this show up in the test results?

Why even employ engineers? Circuit simulators today are excellent, the models they produce are more accurate than ever, but design labs are still full of humans. Given todays corporate cost models, you bet your ass they'd dump them in a heartbeat if they could.

musicoverall
05-18-2005, 05:04 AM
Please repeat your blind listening test with one minor modification; wait one year between each test. This would prove forever that you can' tell the cables apart.

Seriously why wait 24 hours? This makes the test artificially hard. The simple question is: can you (anyone) reliably hear a difference?

.

My point was to evaluate the cables in the same manner as I listen to music...relaxed and attentive... no stress. Further, the cables had to be changed while I was away and while the swapper was available. I didn't find the test particularly hard. I was absolutely positive which cable I was listening to 8 of 13 times. I would have bet the farm on it. Now a quick 30 second burst of music and a quick guess? THAT would have been hard... not to mention that it would have likely produced a null result.

I've been reading about DBT's a bit lately with respect to audio gear (and in general). It seems there are a lot of opponents to these tests with an awful lot of seemingly good reasons why they don't work. Interesting....

hermanv
05-18-2005, 08:43 AM
That was supposed to say "can't tell". not "can' tell" sorry, complete change of meaning.

I am a firm believer in cable differences and have put considerable money into my belief.

When I demonstrate two cables at home, non audiophiles can easily hear differences.

hermanv
05-18-2005, 09:03 AM
For me the question on cable sonic differences should move on to "why do these differences exist?"

I am an engineer, I've done the math, it doesn't explain what's going on. So the naysayers have an excellent point. But the inability to explain how the universe was formed does not negate it's existence. Just like the fact that resistance, capacitance and inductance doesn't explain cable sonic differences doesn't in any way guarantee that there aren't any differences.

Let me clarify, the differences I hear between cables could not be eliminated by setting a tone control to a different position, it is not that kind of change. What I hear can best be described as a non-audiophile friend described it: "There was a reduction in dirt, now I get it".

The noise floor dropped, hash was reduced, detail and clarity were improved. This is what I and my audiophile friends experience with the better cables.

We do not know how this is possible, but because each cable we have tried has distinctive differences, about which hash, which band and how much change. When we discuss the tests, we hear very similar things although either language or ability to describe these things seems quite limited.

mystic
05-18-2005, 09:27 AM
My point was to evaluate the cables in the same manner as I listen to music...relaxed and attentive... no stress. Further, the cables had to be changed while I was away and while the swapper was available. I didn't find the test particularly hard. I was absolutely positive which cable I was listening to 8 of 13 times. I would have bet the farm on it. Now a quick 30 second burst of music and a quick guess? THAT would have been hard... not to mention that it would have likely produced a null result.

I've been reading about DBT's a bit lately with respect to audio gear (and in general). It seems there are a lot of opponents to these tests with an awful lot of seemingly good reasons why they don't work. Interesting....

A double blind test(DBT) works when it confirms a sighted listening claim. Whether the test works when it doesn't confirm a claim is less certain. Some audiophiles suspect the testing method has a null bias.

Regardless of validity, the DBT lacks relevance as a tool for evaluating hifi equipment in the home because this method of testing is too inconvenient and too difficult to do properly. You are among the few on the Forum who have ever reported a personal home experiment with blinded testing.

I doubt even the proponents of blinded testing use it in choosing hifi equipment. Although they believe speakers are audibly different, few report finding their favorites through testing.

musicoverall
05-18-2005, 09:33 AM
I doubt even the proponents of blinded testing use it in choosing hifi equipment. Although they believe speakers are audibly different, few report finding their favorites through testing.

As I understand it, they believe DBT's aren't needed on purchases when there have been successful DBT's in the past, as there have been on speakers, tube vs SS amps and speaker wire 24awg vs 12 or 16 awg. When things measure similarly or the same, they require DBT's to "prove" there are differences, such as with amps, preamps and CDP's. They believe they are purchasing the finest sonic quality available when they buy $80 CDP's and $100 receivers because no DBT they are aware of has shown anything but null results.

mystic
05-19-2005, 09:10 AM
As I understand it, they believe DBT's aren't needed on purchases when there have been successful DBT's in the past, as there have been on speakers, tube vs SS amps and speaker wire 24awg vs 12 or 16 awg. When things measure similarly or the same, they require DBT's to "prove" there are differences, such as with amps, preamps and CDP's. They believe they are purchasing the finest sonic quality available when they buy $80 CDP's and $100 receivers because no DBT they are aware of has shown anything but null results.

We hear mostly about blinded testing to detect audible differences in components, but the testing also could be used to detect preference biases in cases where the components are already know to be audibly different. We do know there can be significant differences in the sounds of different models of speakers. We also know how a particular model sounds to a listener in sighted conditions may be influenced by his attitudes, beliefs, and expectations. In sighted listening, for example, a person might prefer the sound of a speaker that looks nice to one that is less attractive, but prefer the sound of the latter in a blinded test. However, it is very difficult to do blinded tests of speakers, and my guess is even the most enthusiastic proponents of this testing rarely use it before choosing which model to buy, relying instead on their sighted judgement.

skeptic
05-24-2005, 05:58 AM
"my tests don't prove anything, not even to me"

This is one statement I wholeheartedly agree with. Your tests prove nothing.

There weren't nearly enough trials to be statisitically significant. If you flipped a coin 13 times and it came up heads 10 times in a row, that does not demonstrate that the coin isn't fair and that after 1000 tries or 1,000,000 tries it wouldn't be nearly 50%/50%.

The procedure was flawed. Without rapidly switching, you can't be sure there weren't other variables at work you weren't aware of. Did you just happen to listen to one cable on evenings you came home tired from work? Were there any other coincidences you didn't consider. It is very difficult to devise a fair test even when you try. That is why the test procedure needs to be published and reviewed by others who can analyze it for flaws and duplicate the results.

But by far, most importantly, the test is the wrong one. There is only one criteria for testing cables if you accept the premise that the only function for a cable or connector is to get an electrical signal from point A to point B in a circuit with no change which would compromise its purpose and in this case, that is whether the cable is audibly different from one which ideal, namely a shunt. By this standard (the only rational one I accept) once a cable has demonstrated this property, looking further is pointless. The best cable is the cheapest one which performs this function reliably. If you need to alter the signal by changing its frequency response, buy a box of capacitors, resistors, and inductors and have a ball trying them out. It's cheaper and you can play with them endlessly. Personally, I prefer using an active equalizer for this purpose. It not only boils down to the same thing but it is inexpensive, easy to use, and entirely predictable in its operation.

"This test served to reinforce strongly that cables should be the last thing someone tries to improve their system"

No, IMO the selection of cables which perform identically to a shunt should be the first thing someone selects and the good news is that after about 70 or 80 years of manufacturing, testing, and understanding the performance of cables for all types of electrical applications, the cable manufacturing industry came up with inexpensive solutions to the simple problems audiophiles and sound engineers face decades ago. It is only the naive pursuit of something "better" by untrained audiophiles which has given life and profits to this niche industry.

kexodusc
05-24-2005, 06:05 AM
Hey Skep, I thought you swore never to return? :D



"my tests don't prove anything, not even to me"

This is one statement I wholeheartedly agree with. Your tests prove nothing.

There weren't nearly enough trials to be statisitically significant. If you flipped a coin 13 times and it came up heads 10 times in a row, that does not demonstrate that the coin isn't fair and that after 1000 tries or 1,000,000 tries it wouldn't be nearly 50%/50%.

The procedure was flawed. Without rapidly switching, you can't be sure there weren't other variables at work you weren't aware of. Did you just happen to listen to one cable on evenings you came home tired from work? Were there any other coincidences you didn't consider. It is very difficult to devise a fair test even when you try. That is why the test procedure needs to be published and reviewed by others who can analyze it for flaws and duplicate the results.

But by far, most importantly, the test is the wrong one. There is only one criteria for testing cables if you accept the premise that the only function for a cable or connector is to get an electrical signal from point A to point B in a circuit with no change which would compromise its purpose and in this case, that is whether the cable is audibly different from one which ideal, namely a shunt. By this standard (the only rational one I accept) once a cable has demonstrated this property, looking further is pointless. The best cable is the cheapest one which performs this function reliably. If you need to alter the signal by changing its frequency response, buy a box of capacitors, resistors, and inductors and have a ball trying them out. It's cheaper and you can play with them endlessly. Personally, I prefer using an active equalizer for this purpose. It not only boils down to the same thing but it is inexpensive, easy to use, and entirely predictable in its operation.

"This test served to reinforce strongly that cables should be the last thing someone tries to improve their system"

No, IMO the selection of cables which perform identically to a shunt should be the first thing someone selects and the good news is that after about 70 or 80 years of manufacturing, testing, and understanding the performance of cables for all types of electrical applications, the cable manufacturing industry came up with inexpensive solutions to the simple problems audiophiles and sound engineers face decades ago. It is only the naive pursuit of something "better" by untrained audiophiles which has given life and profits to this niche industry.

musicoverall
05-24-2005, 09:51 AM
[QUOTE=skeptic
This is one statement I wholeheartedly agree with. Your tests prove nothing.

[/QUOTE]

Rapid switching DBT's prove nothing, either. So it all goes back to whether or not the consumer hears a difference during normal listening. I do. As unreliable as that may be, all else is unreliable as well.

BTW, I come home tired from work everyday! :)

>The best cable is the cheapest one which performs this function reliably. <

I agree with that. Unfortunately, the cheaper cable did not live up to its duty in my case.

hermanv
05-24-2005, 10:50 AM
If you need to alter the signal by changing its frequency response, buy a box of capacitors, resistors, and inductors and have a ball trying them out.
Here we go again. There is no evidence or claim that what different cables do is alter the frequency response in any meaningful way. It's this old notion that it must be the reactance that drives the belief that the differences between cables can be modeled with an R, a C and an L. - Nonsense.

Instead of debating what it is we hear, the naysayers attempt to force the discussion back into this reactance model, and then proceed to prove reactance can not do what the cable aficionados say they hear, it is a straw man argument.

I think cables sound different, I do not believe for a minute that only tone controls or equalizers are needed to make one cable sound like another. If I believed that I would add equalizers or tone controls to my system (mostly they cost less than cables!! :D )

What I hear is a change in grain, character, harshness and noise floor. As a result of these changes it often results in an apparent increase or decrease in frequency content at one or another frequency but I've never heard a cable change sound like changing the knob on a tone control.

Seizing on the difficulty of language to accurately describe the cable issue avoids the crux of the matter.


....the test is the wrong one...There is only one criteria for testing cables ..that is whether the cable is audibly different from one which ideal, namely a shunt. By this standard (the only rational one I accept)
First semester logic: If A is different from B; then either A or B must be different from C (the shunt)

ps. Many cables have been tested against the shunt model, see the discussions section at WireWorld. (Yes I know they must be money grubbing corporate opportunists and any opinion they promote is automatically suspect, luckily I have ears.)

FLZapped
05-24-2005, 11:01 AM
Robot_Czar: Resistance, capacitance and inductance are by no means the only technogical properties of cables. No cable carrying time variant signals can be accurately modeled with a single R a single C and a single L ask any communications designer. Besides the distribution of these first order reactive devices, cables also have dielectric absorbtion, they pick up and radiate RFI signals and exhibit thermionic heating. I do not claim any of this explains the differences, it's just that trying to model a complex real world behavior with a simple set of substitutions does not work for cables (or anything else) if you examine the results closely.


Your argument is a strawman. No one has shown that anything outside of RCL is needed to accurately model speaker cables. If they have, please provide the necessary proof to back up your assertion. Please also show proof of your assertion that using distributed components at audio frequencies is any more accurate in describing the circuit than lumped components are.

Dielectric absorption is a byproduct of the dielectric and this, in turn, is a part of the capacitance model. As such, this is easily accounted for. However, in speaker cables this is a non-sequitur as the circuit impedance is so low that any residual effect from the dielectric would be swamped out. So go right ahead and figure out the effects created by the energy from 1000pF into a circuit that is a fraction of an ohm. And how many dB down is it going to be from the main signal? Think it has any possibility of being audible?

I don't understand where you are going with your RFI and heating statement, this is common to all unshielded speaker wire(or even wire in general). Actually, if your speaker wire is getting hot enough for you to detect it, you have the wrong guage wire and it doesn't take an engineer to figure that one out.



Like I've stated before, all amplifier designers listen to their designs, why would they bother to do do this? Often the listening tests result in iteritive design changes - huh - didn't this show up in the test results?

And how often do they not? No one ever seems to mention that.....actually, does anyone really even know the answer to the first assumption? This is thrown out a lot, but never quantified.

As it is, a good engineering manager will not be satisfied with "we heard something" - he's going to challenge you to measure it and quantify it. Otherwise there is no way to determine how severe the changes may need to be and what impact it is going to have on the product design cycle. Actually, most engineers are motivated enough to do this on their own without prompting.....gee, another strawman emerges from the rubble.



Why even employ engineers? Circuit simulators today are excellent, the models they produce are more accurate than ever, but design labs are still full of humans. Given todays corporate cost models, you bet your ass they'd dump them in a heartbeat if they could.

This is another strawman argument. Engineering Models do not necessarily make a better product in single quantities. They do help make products that will perform more uniformly from unit to unit and reduce the cycle time from conception to market.

There are so many other things an engineer does in the process of getting a product out the door that it is silly to even dream up this idea.

I do agree that the greed at the top of the corporate structure would cause them to exclude anyone possible in order to make a buck, but this has nothing to do with the topic at hand. So we start with a strawman and end with one.

In conclusion, you have presented a lot of arguments without any basis in fact or arguments that are not relevant to the discussion.

-Bruce

musicoverall
05-24-2005, 11:01 AM
[QUOTE=hermanv]
What I hear is a change in grain, character, harshness and noise floor. As a result of these changes it often results in an apparent increase or decrease in frequency content at one or another frequency but I've never heard a cable change sound like changing the knob on a tone control.

QUOTE]

What I hear is a change in the imaging and soundstaging of my system, for the most part. I've never really heard a change in frequency content with a cable. Tone controls are a whole 'nuther matter. I realize that my comment won't be of much use to the science crowd around here but the lesser cable simply sounded "confused" - almost like it was getting conflicting messages from my amp. It just sounded "wrong" - not harsh or bright or dull. I'd have to work to describe it in usable terms but it did not do justice to the music coming from my system. As for grain...well, I stopped hearing grain in my system when I graduated from SS electronics to tubes.

FLZapped
05-24-2005, 11:31 AM
In response to Skeptic, who wrote:



If you need to alter the signal by changing its frequency response, buy a box of capacitors, resistors, and inductors and have a ball trying them out.

Hermanv writes:


Here we go again. There is no evidence or claim that what different cables do is alter the frequency response in any meaningful way. It's this old notion that it must be the reactance that drives the belief that the differences between cables can be modeled with an R, a C and an L. - Nonsense.

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA - where do you think passive crossovers come from?

And BTW - there are plenty of claims such as this. One only needs to look at all the white papers from maufacturers who claim a more accurate frequency response from their product and what do the cite usually? Series inductance.(And you can put skin effect in there too, since this affects inductance eventually)

And if you don't use RCL, what ARE you going to use? Even transmission lines are modeled as RCL structures. Want to use their conjugate, go right ahead, but at some point, you're going to return to RCL.


As a result of these changes it often results in an apparent increase or decrease in frequency content at one or another frequency

WOW! You have just argued against yourself. The description above is exactly what happens with the description below.



but I've never heard a cable change sound like changing the knob on a tone control.

Brilliant. :p

-Bruce

hermanv
05-24-2005, 12:48 PM
I

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA - where do you think passive crossovers come from?


A passive crossover is device whose intent is to change frequency response. A cable is a device usually crafted NOT to change frequency response. There is little humor in your statement and even less information.


WOW! You have just argued against yourself. The description above is exactly what happens with the description below.
Perhaps if you read the post instead of a knee jerk response, I never claimed frequency response changes, I used the word apparently in a very specific way, I also described exactly what I hear in the previous sentence.


And if you don't use RCL, what ARE you going to use? Even transmission lines are modeled as RCL structures. Want to use their conjugate, go right ahead, but at some point, you're going to return to RCL.
The models used for communications cables do use distributed reactance's to model loss (and only loss), that model does not explain why communications cables are twisted for example (unless they are coaxial) but they always are. That model does not deal accurately with skin effect nor does it deal with dielectric absorption. The fact that a sub set of cable behavior can be modeled with an RCL analogy does not rule out that cables have many other performance issues. In other words the model is far from complete. So since the cable effect is poorly understood you say it therefore can't exist. The creation of the universe is poorly understood, nevertheless I am here.

Once again the opposition attempts, as always, to present an explanation for the wrong question. And then proceed to go on at great length to repeat that the wrong explanation isn't an explanation at all - duh.

Let me re-state: ABX testing has PROOVED(!) that differences exist. The job is to find out what causes them. Technologists examined RLC parameters and pretty much concluded that those are extremely unlikely to account for the differences.

So no matter how often it is stated that RLC does not explain cable differences this does not negate the established fact that there are differences, it only confirms that RLC is probably not the cause.

E-Stat
05-24-2005, 02:33 PM
What I hear is a change in grain, character, harshness and noise floor. As a result of these changes it often results in an apparent increase or decrease in frequency content at one or another frequency but I've never heard a cable change sound like changing the knob on a tone control.
You're not alone. The theorists have more than adequately eliminated what factors are not causing the differences. :)

rw

shokhead
05-24-2005, 06:18 PM
You mean a $500 cable wont add 1db? Man,and thats sucxh a small price to pay for a gain. :p

E-Stat
05-25-2005, 04:42 AM
You mean a $500 cable wont add 1db?
The difference between good cables and great cables is subtractive. It is for what they don't add.

rw

FLZapped
05-25-2005, 05:05 AM
A passive crossover is device whose intent is to change frequency response. A cable is a device usually crafted NOT to change frequency response. There is little humor in your statement and even less information.

You missed the point. Passovers are RCL circuits. Cables are RCL circuits. Therefore, to ignore that audio speaker cables cannot be modeled as RCL circuits is ignoring the obvious on your part. You have yet to prove your assertion that you can get any more accurate results by different methodology.



Perhaps if you read the post instead of a knee jerk response, I never claimed frequency response changes, I used the word apparently in a very specific way, I also described exactly what I hear in the previous sentence.

Not knee jerk at all, you were saying you heard 'apparent' changes in discrete frequencies caused by changing cables, and then argued against the idea that cables can do that. Apparent in this case would signal to most that you did not measure it to verify if precisely. Of course, you could now changing your posisiton and hanging your hat on the idea this was just an illusion and nothing actualy changed, except your perception. Which would make your whole cable theories moot, placing the argument squarely in the realm of psychoacoustics.



The models used for communications cables do use distributed reactance's to model loss (and only loss), that model does not explain why communications cables are twisted for example (unless they are coaxial) but they always are.

Guess you've never seen ladder line, or 4 wire parallel transmission line, for that matter. Have you forgotten about 300 ohm transmission line used for TV antennas???? (aka twinlead)



That model does not deal accurately with skin effect nor does it deal with dielectric absorption. The fact that a sub set of cable behavior can be modeled with an RCL analogy does not rule out that cables have many other performance issues. In other words the model is far from complete. So since the cable effect is poorly understood you say it therefore can't exist. The creation of the universe is poorly understood, nevertheless I am here.

The only place it is not understood is in between your ears, the universe not withstanding. The two are mutually exclusive in this case.

I specifically asked you to make your case and yet you come back make the same assertions without supporting facts. If you are going to throw away decades of engineering knowledge with your superior methodology, you better be showing some proof you actually know what the hell you're talking about.



So no matter how often it is stated that RLC does not explain cable differences this does not negate the established fact that there are differences, it only confirms that RLC is probably not the cause.

Prove your assertion, especially in light of how important "apparent" has become to you.

-Bruce

FLZapped
05-25-2005, 05:21 AM
You're not alone. The theorists have more than adequately eliminated what factors are not causing the differences. :)

rw

No, engineers have. It's only audiophiles(pronounced audiofools) who hold onto the "flat earth" idea to justify their waste of money on snake oil.

-Bruce

hermanv
05-25-2005, 10:22 AM
I specifically asked you to make your case and yet you come back make the same assertions without supporting facts. If you are going to throw away decades of engineering knowledge with your superior methodology, you better be showing some proof you actually know what the hell you're talking about.


My case:
1. Several people have repeatedly "passed" the double blind cable listening tests. Either they are psychic or there is in fact an audible difference between cables. Once any one person can do this repeatedly the argument that there is no difference is dead.

2. The mathematics of reactance calculations for cables that are a meter or so long and conventionally constructed show that the reactance components are tiny with respect to the audio band and the circuit impedances, this makes the reactance components of a cable extremely unlikely to cause the "cable's sound signature" under discussion.

3. I have thrown away nothing of engineering knowledge; I have only said that the RLC model by itself does explain how cables work. (Example: it is possible to build a cable with identical RLC values to your twin lead example that is effectively worthless for transmitting RF signals.)

In other words there is a fact that cables sound different. There is a second fact that RLC does not seem to explain why they sound different. So the simple fact is that most people, and possibly no one, knows what causes the cable effect. I say most, because as I have said in other posts, there seem to be a small number of cable companies (examples like Kimber and WireWorld) whose cables get high ratings at many different price points. Even though they are built of different things someone there knows how to get good performance out of quite different ingredients.

So you seem to be saying that in spite of absolute proof that cables do sound different, if I can't replace the RLC model with another science model then suddenly cables can't sound different anymore?

In spite of 30 years as a communications engineer, I do not understand the answer. As an electronic engineer I was a powerful skeptic because I did the math. I concluded that a cable sound signature was an extremely unlikely phenomenon, but I listened and became instantly convinced that the RLC model couldn't begin to explain the differences I heard.

I have discussed this with other engineers and the theories proposed slowly moved far out of the mainstream. I'm not willing to mention them here because the likely hood that they are the correct explanation seems pretty small.

E-Stat
05-25-2005, 10:56 AM
No, engineers have.
Very well. Engineers have determined what the answer isn't.

rw

hermanv
05-25-2005, 11:21 AM
Exactly. Every time we try and discuss a possible explanation, we are dragged back into the it does, it doesn't exist diversion.

Hey moderator: How about a thread where we discuss possibilities with the given that participants acknowledge no debate about whether a difference exisits?

E-Stat
05-25-2005, 12:34 PM
Exactly. Every time we try and discuss a possible explanation, we are dragged back into the it does, it doesn't exist diversion.

Hey moderator: How about a thread where we discuss possibilities with the given that participants acknowledge no debate about whether a difference exisits?
Feel free to post such a thread in the cable forum where the guidelines are more open. The intent of the Audio Lab was to focus the discussion on scientific principles and tests as opposed to anecdotal experience.

I'm pleased that the former era of inappropriate personal attacks remains in the past. I certainly have no trouble with benign jabs such as Zapped's "audiofools" comment.

rw

musicoverall
05-26-2005, 05:28 AM
[QUOTE=hermanv]Exactly. Every time we try and discuss a possible explanation, we are dragged back into the it does, it doesn't exist diversion.

QUOTE]

I'm always amazed that some people on this board expend such massive amounts of time and energy on something they believe doesn't exist!

krabapple
05-28-2005, 10:12 PM
Here we go again. There is no evidence or claim that what different cables do is alter the frequency response in any meaningful way. It's this old notion that it must be the reactance that drives the belief that the differences between cables can be modeled with an R, a C and an L. - Nonsense.

Instead of debating what it is we hear, the naysayers attempt to force the discussion back into this reactance model, and then proceed to prove reactance can not do what the cable aficionados say they hear, it is a straw man argument.

I think cables sound different, I do not believe for a minute that only tone controls or equalizers are needed to make one cable sound like another. If I believed that I would add equalizers or tone controls to my system (mostly they cost less than cables!! :D )

What I hear is a change in grain, character, harshness and noise floor. As a result of these changes it often results in an apparent increase or decrease in frequency content at one or another frequency but I've never heard a cable change sound like changing the knob on a tone control.

Seizing on the difficulty of language to accurately describe the cable issue avoids the crux of the matter.


Fascinating. There is a 'prize' of several thousand dollars waiting from rec.audio.high-end to anyone who can pass a DBT of a pair of cables that have been vetted to be within 0.01 dB of each other at three FR test points. I urge you to consider taking them up.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.audio.high-end/msg/924808a3c23a2f54?dmode=source&hl=en

IIRC the Amazing Randi's $1 million paranormal challenge may also cover dubious audio claims, but you'll have to check with his organization to verify that.





ps. Many cables have been tested against the shunt model, see the discussions section at WireWorld. (Yes I know they must be money grubbing corporate opportunists and any opinion they promote is automatically suspect, luckily I have ears.)


It's curious that no audio cable manufacturer (and certainly no *high-end* cable mfr) has ever published any DBT results in scientific literature..or even in promotional literature, AFAIK. Apparently that includes Wireworld. Wireworld is wrong about ABX cable tests...they *can* be set up so that the user does the switching. Contrary to what Wireowlrd calims, they also certainly can be and are used in mp3 development (see www.hydrogenaudio.org). So Wireworld is a rather suspect source to me.

krabapple
05-28-2005, 10:20 PM
My case:
1. Several people have repeatedly "passed" the double blind cable listening tests. Either they are psychic or there is in fact an audible difference between cables. Once any one person can do this repeatedly the argument that there is no difference is dead.

It is certainly possible that difference in guage , length, or construction can result in audible cable differences. That two cables *can* sound different is not a controversial or unreasonable claim. So it's always important to note under *what* condition differences were heard.




In other words there is a fact that cables sound different.


There is a fact that cables *can* sound different....that's a *different* fact suggesting they all do...or that any given pair does.



There is a second fact that RLC does not seem to explain why they sound different.

No, that is a *claim*...unless you can demonstrate that two cables with the same RLC values sound different in a DBT.



So the simple fact is that most people, and possibly no one, knows what causes the cable effect. I say most, because as I have said in other posts, there seem to be a small number of cable companies (examples like Kimber and WireWorld) whose cables get high ratings at many different price points. Even though they are built of different things someone there knows how to get good performance out of quite different ingredients.

This 'cable effect' has yet to be demonstrated scientifically, hence the explanation would be premature.It is certainly NOT the case that in the engineering world, audible differences between cables are thought to be 'unexplained'. Nor has the AES to my knowledge ever published any demosntrations of this unexplained 'effect'.



So you seem to be saying that in spite of absolute proof that cables do sound different,

Such proof has not yet been offered. There is plenty of proof, however, that cables *can* be made to sound different.



In spite of 30 years as a communications engineer, I do not understand the answer.

If you have data on such an astonishing 'effect' , why have you not published it?


As an electronic engineer I was a powerful skeptic because I did the math. I concluded that a cable sound signature was an extremely unlikely phenomenon, but I listened and became instantly convinced that the RLC model couldn't begin to explain the differences I heard.

That doesn't sound very scientific. DId you do a proper DBT series? WHere's the data?



I have discussed this with other engineers and the theories proposed slowly moved far out of the mainstream. I'm not willing to mention them here because the likely hood that they are the correct explanation seems pretty small.

Oh...I see.


:rolleyes:

krabapple
05-28-2005, 10:55 PM
One might also consider the rather authoritative essays from audio component engineers Doug Self and Rod Elliot, that touch upon speaker cable differences:

http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/pseudo/subjectv.htm

http://sound.westhost.com/cables-p2.htm#spkr-leads

and some ABX results of speaker cable comparisons:

http://www.pcavtech.com/abx/abx_wire.htm

E-Stat
05-29-2005, 03:40 AM
One might also consider the rather authoritative essays from audio component engineers Doug Self and Rod Elliot, that touch upon speaker cable differences:

Carlstrom's data is from the seventies and Self's is from the eighties. The NYT article was lacking in any details other than cables can offer the last two percent of performance.

Got any real tests using something like Valhalla more recently than 15 years ago?

rw

shokhead
05-29-2005, 06:25 AM
Only real test is without any devices and only your ears.

musicoverall
05-29-2005, 08:15 AM
Fascinating. There is a 'prize' of several thousand dollars waiting from rec.audio.high-end to anyone who can pass a DBT of a pair of cables that have been vetted to be within 0.01 dB of each other at three FR test points. I urge you to consider taking them up.

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.audio.high-end/msg/924808a3c23a2f54?dmode=source&hl=en
.

I didn't see all the rules of the offer but in reading the earlier posts leading up to your link, it appears to be the same faulty test I've read about elsewhere. The participant travels to a foreign location and listens to an unknown system in an unfamiliar room where two sets of cables are swapped.

I'll pay you $10,000 if you successfully pass an eye exam that I will give you. You must simply detect which of two different shades of blue is which under an ABX format. You must score 15 corrects out of 20. You must also wear my eyeglasses during the test... and I'LL adjust the room lighting as I see fit. And since the test must be repeatable to prove anything, you must pass it 5 times for a total of 75 corrects out of 100 trials.

krabapple
05-29-2005, 04:59 PM
Only real test is without any devices and only your ears.


Wow...no *devices*? Do live musicans play in your listening room?
:p

Seriously, leaving aside your use of 'devices' to play back recorded music (these devices are OK...but a passive switch *isn't*?) you actually have hit on the reason double blind testing is used to substantiate claims of audible difference: it's the only method that ensures you're using *only your earss* to make the call. The typical 'audiophile ' method, on the other hand is readily 'contaminated' by what the listener believes about the devices. It happens even if you present the *same* device to the listener, twice. It's trivially easy to generate reports of 'difference' --even *vast* difference -- simply by leading a listener to believe that the first device is a high-priced boutique brand, and hte second is a mass market brand. Or simply by leading the listener to believe that that two are different devices.

Given how easy it is to 'fool' the ear in a *sighted* comparison, why treat them as 'informative'?

krabapple
05-29-2005, 05:00 PM
I didn't see all the rules of the offer but in reading the earlier posts leading up to your link, it appears to be the same faulty test I've read about elsewhere. The participant travels to a foreign location and listens to an unknown system in an unfamiliar room where two sets of cables are swapped.

Nope, I don't know where you got your ideas, but in fact the test can be with the user's own system, using their preferred listening material...an important stipulation , though ,is that a mutually agreed-upon third party has to be there to proctor the test and its results, assuring e.g. that the setup was as per the 'rules'. Would Tom Nousaine do, for you?



I'll pay you $10,000 if you successfully pass an eye exam that I will give you. You must simply detect which of two different shades of blue is which under an ABX format. You must score 15 corrects out of 20. You must also wear my eyeglasses during the test... and I'LL adjust the room lighting as I see fit. And since the test must be repeatable to prove anything, you must pass it 5 times for a total of 75 corrects out of 100 trials.

Funny, but not apropos to the actual cable challenge. Having allayed your fears about the actual cable test, I urge you to go for it. Or at least do some bragging on rec.audio.high-end first; it would be most amusing.

krabapple
05-29-2005, 05:19 PM
Carlstrom's data is from the seventies and Self's is from the eighties.

So..cables *now* sound different, but didn't *then*? Wow.


The NYT article was lacking in any details other than cables can offer the last two percent of performance.

..but without offering any evidence for that...



Got any real tests using something like Valhalla more recently than 15 years ago?

rw

Not me, personally...you? Got any data about Valhalla frequency response? If so I'll make a guess as to whether they'll sound different from other cables. For that matter, got *any* data showing speaker cable differences that can't be explained by simple RCL parameter differences?

I at least know where to find some measurement data about 'modern' cabling:

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/audioprinciples/interconnects/speakercablereviewsfaceoff.php

Note the disturbing disjunctions between the claims the manufacturers make about their cables, and either scientific likelihood, or alas actual measurement.

Got any data showing that sighed comparison of speaker cables is a reliable way of evaluating their 'sound', and that DBTs *aren't* necessary to circumvent bias effects when comparing cables?

Really, do you think Elliot and Self are just *ignorant* of some new development in cables, cable-testing, or what? How about John Dunlavy?

How about interconnects? Here's a recent shootout:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=33951


Lastly, audioholics has kindly provided a one-stop site for all cable nonsense debunking. Let's all thank them .

ttp://www.audioholics.com/techtips/audioprinciples/cables.htm

musicoverall
05-29-2005, 05:43 PM
. Having allayed your fears about the actual cable test, I urge you to go for it. Or at least do some bragging on rec.audio.high-end first; it would be most amusing.

I may just do that - after I finish digging into the basics of DBT for music listening. So far, it's not looking too good for DBT as a viable means to discern subtle differences. There's really no good test so far as I can tell at this point. DBT looks good for drug testing; not so good for subtle differences in audio gear.

Do you have a link showing the official rules of this test? Anyone tried it as far as you know?

And I'm always happy to amuse people! I never fail to get tickled by two things from the naysayers. First, their zeal in arguing over something they believe is non-existent and second, their willingness to believe only when someone else proves something. I think the best form of humor is two people making each other laugh! :)

mystic
05-30-2005, 09:00 AM
I may just do that - after I finish digging into the basics of DBT for music listening. So far, it's not looking too good for DBT as a viable means to discern subtle differences. There's really no good test so far as I can tell at this point. DBT looks good for drug testing; not so good for subtle differences in audio gear.

Do you have a link showing the official rules of this test? Anyone tried it as far as you know?

And I'm always happy to amuse people! I never fail to get tickled by two things from the naysayers. First, their zeal in arguing over something they believe is non-existent and second, their willingness to believe only when someone else proves something. I think the best form of humor is two people making each other laugh! :)

After reading krabapple's link to re.audio.high-end, it looks to me like they are saying they can make a zip cord cord sound like any audiophile cable by altering the zip cord (e.g., "add a few passive components to some zip cord to achieve the same FR"). It isn't clear whether they also would want to be able to alter the audiophile cable.

Requiring you to identify the cable correctly 15 times out of 20 to win the money seems to set the p value bar a little high(i.e., 0.02). Usually in hypothesis testing a p value of 0.05 is chosen, which I believe would be 14 out of 20. It's not much difference, but I guess they want an edge in case you get very lucky or hear a difference in the cables.

Without seeing a full description of their rules, I can't comment further on the cable challenge. Before participating in such a test, however, I would want everything in writing and in the form of an enforceable contract. Otherwise, you may have a difficult time collecting the money if you win.

It's hard to beat someone at their game.

hermanv
05-30-2005, 09:56 AM
Fascinating. There is a 'prize' of several thousand dollars waiting from rec.audio.high-end to anyone who can pass a DBT of a pair of cables that have been vetted to be within 0.01 dB of each other at three FR test points. I urge you to consider taking them up.
It sort of unclear if the pool exists. The author says he has contributed $200 and others would contribute. He also says that he'll pay $1,000 if you go to England , I didn't see an actual address, bank account nor a enforcable contract.

ps. He is asking for +/-0.1dB, sort of reasonable where +/-0.01 dB is not. It is possible that two identical cables would not pass the +/-0.01dB hurdle especially if they are hand made. It also unclear where on could find an instrument that was 0.01 dB accurate. The best I've used has a resolution of 0.01 DB but nowhere near that accuracy (that's about one tenth of 1%; if you read the fine print 2% is common 1% rare for RMS meters).

According to his rules, one could easily cheat. He checks at 100, 1000 and 10,000Hz. A notch filter at 200-800 Hz would pass his rules yet any fool could hear it was there (you'd put it in one of those little boxes MIT cables seem to like so much).

This offer may have been made in the passion of cable discussions, it seems a little questionable.

E-Stat
05-31-2005, 04:42 AM
So..cables *now* sound different, but didn't *then*? Wow.
You're right. Technology hasn't advanced at all in the past quarter century.


Really, do you think Elliot and Self are just *ignorant* of some new development in cables, cable-testing, or what?
We'll never know until they do so and update their comments.


Lastly, audioholics has kindly provided a one-stop site for all cable nonsense debunking. Let's all thank them .
They've done a most thorough job of quantifying LCR parameters. Yawn.

rw

FLZapped
06-01-2005, 10:31 AM
Very well. Engineers have determined what the answer isn't.

rw

No, audiophiles just don't want to hear the truth. It doesn't justify their wasting of money.

FLZapped
06-01-2005, 10:47 AM
My case:
1. Several people have repeatedly "passed" the double blind cable listening tests. Either they are psychic or there is in fact an audible difference between cables. Once any one person can do this repeatedly the argument that there is no difference is dead.

Is this published? Has it been independantly verified?



2. The mathematics of reactance calculations for cables that are a meter or so long and conventionally constructed show that the reactance components are tiny with respect to the audio band and the circuit impedances, this makes the reactance components of a cable extremely unlikely to cause the "cable's sound signature" under discussion.


Then you probably need to look for another variable outside the cable.



3. I have thrown away nothing of engineering knowledge; I have only said that the RLC model by itself does explain how cables work. (Example: it is possible to build a cable with identical RLC values to your twin lead example that is effectively worthless for transmitting RF signals.)


This is just another strawman. We aren't talking about rf cables.



In other words there is a fact that cables sound different.

Where? Citation of said fact, please.



There is a second fact that RLC does not seem to explain why they sound different. So the simple fact is that most people, and possibly no one, knows what causes the cable effect. I say most, because as I have said in other posts, there seem to be a small number of cable companies (examples like Kimber and WireWorld) whose cables get high ratings at many different price points. Even though they are built of different things someone there knows how to get good performance out of quite different ingredients.

Again, you should then suspect a variabe outside the cable. as for the commercial cable companies, they are in business to make money, the more, the better. Marketing rules the roost when it comes to maximizing profits.


So you seem to be saying that in spite of absolute proof that cables do sound different....

Where is your proof?



As an electronic engineer I was a powerful skeptic because I did the math. I concluded that a cable sound signature was an extremely unlikely phenomenon, but I listened and became instantly convinced that the RLC model couldn't begin to explain the differences I heard.

Have the results been published, reviewed and verified independantly?

-Bruce

FLZapped
06-01-2005, 10:51 AM
It's curious that no audio cable manufacturer (and certainly no *high-end* cable mfr) has ever published any DBT results in scientific literature..or even in promotional literature, AFAIK. Apparently that includes Wireworld. Wireworld is wrong about ABX cable tests...they *can* be set up so that the user does the switching. Contrary to what Wireowlrd calims, they also certainly can be and are used in mp3 development (see www.hydrogenaudio.org). So Wireworld is a rather suspect source to me.

Yes, isn't it also amazing that not a single one has ever williningly participated in one either.

-Bruce

musicoverall
06-01-2005, 01:15 PM
No, audiophiles just don't want to hear the truth. It doesn't justify their wasting of money.

LCR parameters being the whole story behind cable sonics isn't necessarily the truth and better sound via higher definition cables or any other means certainly isn't a waste of money. If you disagree, perhaps better sound isn't your goal.

FLZapped
07-07-2005, 10:40 AM
LCR parameters being the whole story behind cable sonics isn't necessarily the truth

Prove it.


and better sound via higher definition cables

Prove any such thing actually exists.



certainly isn't a waste of money.

Prove it.


If you disagree, perhaps better sound isn't your goal.

Yawn......prove it.

-Bruce
(Astounded at just how idiot final statement is)

hermanv
07-07-2005, 04:53 PM
Prove it.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Prove it.
Wow, boy, sure hard to argue with that. One can only hope you joined the school debating team. With such stunning repartee, with such carefully constructed and considered logic you must have been devastating to the opposition.

I've heard it said that ignorance is bliss; in that case one might fear you're getting too close to comatose (that might explain the yawn).

So what do you think? Tens of thousands of people have bought expensive cables and all of them are fools?

Every time someone does in fact prove that cables have a sound of their own, the opposition just moves the goal posts. First it was a probability of .05, then, if that is met, suddenly only .02 will do. If that is met, now we need an outside observer because we all know that audiophiles lie. Then we need it to be published and last we must have equations because the opposition has taken on all the aspects of a 6 year old saying; is not, is not, is not, is not.

The mathmatical proof for the 4 color map theory took 600 years to be developed, but anyone could easily prove by experimentation that 4 colors always worked.

Anyone with a decent system can easily hear differences in 2 cables; one generic copper, Radio Shack style and the other, one of the sneered at high price models. The really amazing thing is that the difference will be there, whether you can explain it or not.

Just listen, it's not that hard.

Resident Loser
07-08-2005, 07:05 AM
...a fool and his money are soon parted...



So what do you think? Tens of thousands of people have bought expensive cables and all of them are fools?

Soooo...Most of the retail folks I'm acquainted with think it's one big hoot...put some Chinese wire in a fancy skin, stick it in a stained walnut box with some laser-etched logo, maybe a little velveteen, drawstring snood and yer good to go...


...The really amazing thing is that the difference will be there, whether you can explain it or not...

Did anyone say there couldn't be a difference? The only folks who seem to think that's what has been said are the aftermarket afficionados...countless times...Just like "...play it again, Sam..." No one, in my recollection at least, has ever said there can't be a difference....question is, is it improvement or merely difference?

Despite all the talk of "difference", the salient point is, under controlled conditions, I haven't seen any evidence that anyone can distinguish OEM stuff from the high-priced spread with any degree of statistical relevance...bada-bing, bada boom.

jimHJJ(...wire, it seems, is wire...)

jneutron
07-08-2005, 07:46 AM
The mathematics of reactance calculations for cables that are a meter or so long and conventionally constructed show that the reactance components are tiny with respect to the audio band and the circuit impedances, this makes the reactance components of a cable extremely unlikely to cause the "cable's sound signature" under discussion..What are you basing this on? Why are you saying the reactance components of a cable are extremely unlikely...to have an effect? Please explain yourself.

I have thrown away nothing of engineering knowledge; I have only said that the RLC model by itself does explain how cables work. (Example: it is possible to build a cable with identical RLC values to your twin lead example that is effectively worthless for transmitting RF signals.)..You can? Please provide an engineering example to explain this..I of course, assume that you actually meant "carrying RF signals from a source to a load", as opposed to the transmission into free space.

In other words there is a fact that cables sound different.You have not demonstrated, nor pointed to information which would support this statement.

There is a second fact that RLC does not seem to explain why they sound different. .No, you have provided no facts in support of that statement.

So the simple fact is that most people, and possibly no one, knows what causes the cable effect. .You would be incorrect.

I say most, because as I have said in other posts, there seem to be a small number of cable companies (examples like Kimber and WireWorld) whose cables get high ratings at many different price points. Even though they are built of different things someone there knows how to get good performance out of quite different ingredients.."Someone" knows squat about engineering a cable. They do not know how to get good performance out of a cable. They know only how to put stuff together in a random, haphazard, illogical fashion, call that sillyness "engineering", toss some marketing crapola into a farcical "white paper", and charge big bucks to pay the bills..

So you seem to be saying that in spite of absolute proof that cables do sound different, if I can't replace the RLC model with another science model then suddenly cables can't sound different anymore?I would LOOOOOVE to see that "other science model". Mind you, it cannot violate physics, it must be consistent with observation, it must be internally self consistent, it must be EXTERNALLY consistent with the known universe. It cannot use itself as a basis of justification...it must provide predictions which can be measured and verified..Failure in any regard there trashes the model.

As an electronic engineer I was a powerful skeptic because I did the math. I concluded that a cable sound signature was an extremely unlikely phenomenon, but I listened and became instantly convinced that the RLC model couldn't begin to explain the differences I heard.I've no idea what math you are talking about. Please detail this.

I have discussed this with other engineers and the theories proposed slowly moved far out of the mainstream. I'm not willing to mention them here because the likely hood that they are the correct explanation seems pretty small.You would be correct in that if the explanations are moving out of mainstream, they are incorrect.

Please elaborate, and perhaps I can explain why they are incorrect.

John

jneutron
07-08-2005, 07:51 AM
The mathmatical proof for the 4 color map theory took 600 years to be developed, but anyone could easily prove by experimentation that 4 colors always worked.
NO. Nobody can prove by experimentation that 4 colors always works. They can only prove that they are incapable of devising a scenario that requires more than 4..

The mathematical proof does that.

John

hermanv
07-08-2005, 09:14 AM
to jneutron:

With a know source and load impedance, the capacitance and inductance of a cable cause predictable deviations from a straight line frequency response (I left out resistance because in a simple model the volume control neatly compensates for that). I hope we agree up to this point.

When you calculate the amount of deviation caused by most cables, or use equipment to measure this frequency response deviation, the numbers come out in the range of 0.01 to 0.05 dB at 20kHz. There is very little musical information at 20kHz. In the mid-band, results of between 1/2 and 1/10 of that reduction are more typical. Those dB numbers calculate to ratios of around one to five hundreths of a percent mid-band.

There are two reasons why I believe that this level of differential attenuation can not explain the cable issue; First; 0.025 dB is not audible except under very special conditions certainly not with a psuedo-random signal like music. Second; Since a speaker that is flatter than +/- 2 dB is an extremely rare animal, it would appear to follow that attenuation due to cable reactance would be lost in the speakers frequency response inaccuracy.

So my problem is that I easily hear differences between one cable and another but the math says changes due to reactance are very small indeed (and also vary rather smoothly mostly at the ends of the frequency response curve). This is why I believe that the math of RLC on cables doesn't support the differences I and others hear easily.



NO. Nobody can prove by experimentation that 4 colors always works. They can only prove that they are incapable of devising a scenario that requires more than 4.
There are a finite and limited number of possible edge interactions of two dimensional shapes on a two dimensional surface. It is perfectly posible to prove empirically that every possible combination is covered with 4 colors. The number of permutations just isn't that great.

It is falacy and psuedo science to believe that only mathematical proofs are valid, graphical or logical proofs are equally valid. It was known, not suspected, that 4 colors would always work long before the mathmatical proof was developed. The mathematical proof was an interesting exercise not a requirement to validate the use of 4 colors.

I can prove a square peg will not fit in a round hole without any use of math whatsoever.

jneutron
07-08-2005, 11:17 AM
With a know source and load impedance, the capacitance and inductance of a cable cause predictable deviations from a straight line frequency response (I left out resistance because in a simple model the volume control neatly compensates for that). I hope we agree up to this point.
The resistive component affects how well the amp controls the load, so cannot be eliminated by simple gain adjust. It varies with frequency. And, amp control also depends on the damping factor during all 4 quadrants of operation into a reactive load, as well as feedback loop coupling to the supply rails, this being different depending on the half plane of operation. Series resistance softens the high speed current demands.

The inductance is a frequency dependent entity, it changes 30 nH per foot from DC to infinite frequency. This is the internal inductance of a conductor, and is geometry dependent.

The capacitance of some dielectrics varies over frequency.

Some geometries, ribbon for example, starve the dielectric as a result of proximity and skin effect.

Did your calcs include these?..My guess is no.

Where did you accomodate the lagging storage mechanism of L and C, for an impedance mismatched cable driving a load?? What effective ITD vs frequency boundary condition did you use? What overall localization bound did you set for ITD and IID limits?

When you calculate the amount of deviation caused by most cables, or use equipment to measure this frequency response deviation, the numbers come out in the range of 0.01 to 0.05 dB at 20kHz. There is very little musical information at 20kHz. In the mid-band, results of between 1/2 and 1/10 of that reduction are more typical. Those dB numbers calculate to ratios of around one to five hundreths of a percent mid-band..I would be interested in hearing how these were measured. Measuring .01 or even .05 dB accuracy levels of the current driven into an 8 ohm pure resistance at 5 to 20 khz is beyond the vast majority of electrical engineers...they do not even understand that there are errors. Mag field time derivative errors bollux both current and voltage reads. And, that isn't even getting into the acceleration or acceleration derivative mass loading changes on the drivers, or the derivative flux eddy current reactions within the pole piece and driver ring (did you forget Lenz's law??) (I hate it when that happens);)

There are two reasons why I believe that this level of differential attenuation can not explain the cable issue; First; 0.025 dB is not audible except under very special conditions certainly not with a psuedo-random signal like music. Second; Since a speaker that is flatter than +/- 2 dB is an extremely rare animal, it would appear to follow that attenuation due to cable reactance would be lost in the speakers frequency response inaccuracy...hmmm....025 dB is not audible....with monophonic reproduction, that is a true enough statement. I do not believe we are discussing mono jnd's..so, your calcs and their application do not coincide.

So my problem is that I easily hear differences between one cable and another but the math says changes due to reactance are very small indeed (and also vary rather smoothly mostly at the ends of the frequency response curve). This is why I believe that the math of RLC on cables doesn't support the differences I and others hear easily....If you use monophonic soundfield analysis, yes, your belief could be valid. Unfortunately, you are using the incorrect analysis tool for the problem of stereophonic soundstage image generation.

You did not use the correct model, and as such, you could only come to the conclusions you have arrived at. Reasonable ones, but incorrect.

Proving that RLC metrics do not predict the cable "sound" cannot be done with the rudimentary model you discuss..You need a better model...;)

The fun off topic stuff:


There are a finite and limited number of possible edge interactions of two dimensional shapes on a two dimensional surface. It is perfectly posible to prove empirically that every possible combination is covered with 4 colors. The number of permutations just isn't that great.
Playing with anything, maps, whatever, and being unable to prove something incorrect, is not proof that it is correct. Shame on you..you know better.

It is falacy and psuedo science to believe that only mathematical proofs are valid, graphical or logical proofs are equally valid. It was known, not suspected, that 4 colors would always work long before the mathmatical proof was developed. The mathematical proof was an interesting exercise not a requirement to validate the use of 4 colors..Playing with map colors for years only shows that, for years, nobody has needed 5, not that it is impossible..stating that because it has not been done, it is impossible, is not a proof that it cannot be done...merely, that it has not yet..



I can prove a square peg will not fit in a round hole without any use of math whatsoever.
No, you could only prove that you cannot do it..

But I can..two inch round hole, 1 inch square peg..:D ...ya gotta tighten those sentences up..that hole was mack truck sized...had ta take it, ya know..

A topologist would also have fun with your statement...

T'was a pleasure..thanks
Cheers, John

hermanv
07-08-2005, 01:53 PM
The capacitance of some dielectrics varies over frequency.

Some geometries, ribbon for example, starve the dielectric as a result of proximity and skin effect.

Whoa. Many of the discussions on these threads center around RLC models and cables. I have always maintained that these simplistic models do not explain what is going on. In particular a mathmatical model that uses only pure R, L and C such as a first order simulator, will quickly lead you to believe that the whole cables have signatures thing is nuts.

Once you add second or third order effects such as dieletric absorbtion vs frequency, or current hysterysis of magnetic domains in cable alloys or skin effects you are no longer discussing the simple RLC model. The fact that a capacitor has a dielectric still doesn't excuse the generalization. People speak here in terms of asking for proof that a mathmatically perfect capacitor could cause the effects under discussion and it can not. So to many people, the fact that the simple capacitor model can not thereby means that the effect also can not exist.

I am firmly convinced that just the first order RLC effects are not what I am hearing, but I can easily believe that other more exotic effects that you start to list could be what's going on. That was absolutely not the context in which the whole RLC issue was being discussed on this thread.

There are people who essentially claim that if a pure 100nF inductor in series with a 1K Ohm resistor and 100pF to ground capacitor doesn't really affect the sound then neither can a cable with the same measurements. I keep trying to say that's true as far as it goes but it doesn't explain the issue. The cable may have those same parasitic reactances but it also has more complex things going on. It was always my contention that the other effects might explain the auditory differences.

In discussions with other engineers we have considered things such as differential thermionic heating in connector junctions, the dielectric absorbtion you cite and things such as low quality diode junctions at grain boundaries. One big problem is that there is little test equipment that measures Micro effects while in the presense of Macro effects. i.e.what happens to tiny signals while significant current is flowing to the woofer, does it cross modulate? Its not all that hard to do, just very little commercial equipment does it.

This is a discussion group, not a sceintific journal. Short hand is acceptable, spending hours looking for holes in logic while ignoring the main subject benifits no one except the oversized ego. Example; a 1 inch square peg falling through a two inch round hole simply does not meet the definition of fit as used in this context. Shame on you.


Playing with map colors for years only shows that, for years, nobody has needed 5, not that it is impossible..stating that because it has not been done, it is impossible, is not a proof that it cannot be done...merely, that it has not yet..
You insist on missing the point, you don't need years, less than an hour will exhaust every possible combination, there are none that can not be thought of. People knew with absolute certainty that no other answer was possible. It was accepted as a proven long before the math, protest if you wish, but that will not change the history or the fact that forms of proof other than equations exist.

jneutron
07-13-2005, 06:37 AM
Whoa. Many of the discussions on these threads center around RLC models and cables. I have always maintained that these simplistic models do not explain what is going on. In particular a mathmatical model that uses only pure R, L and C such as a first order simulator, will quickly lead you to believe that the whole cables have signatures thing is nuts. .If you use the human hearing model that we can only hear 20 to 20K, with monophonic JND parameters, then your statement is entirely correct.

You have missed one of my points..the criteria for judging the audibility of any effects is incorrect. You did not consider at all, the human hearing sensitivity to either ITD or IID, and it is these parameters which we humans use to discern the direction and distance of a sound source..

So, it is moot to declare even simplistic RLC parameters as not having an effect, as your model for what we hear is so inaccurate..Once the criteria for what we hear w/r to soundstage is firmly established, then simple RLC can be re-calculated for the possibility of exceeding the threshold of audibility.

Once you add second or third order effects such as dieletric absorbtion vs frequency, or current hysterysis of magnetic domains in cable alloys or skin effects you are no longer discussing the simple RLC model. The fact that a capacitor has a dielectric still doesn't excuse the generalization. People speak here in terms of asking for proof that a mathmatically perfect capacitor could cause the effects under discussion and it can not. So to many people, the fact that the simple capacitor model can not thereby means that the effect also can not exist..To me there is no distinction when it comes to the RLC model, as I do not consider it as a simple frequency or impedance invariant descriptor. Again, the bulk of discussion here is attempting to fit the wrong human hearing model to the problem..You have fallen into the same boat, as you have also erred in this fashion. I like the fact that you seem to be attacking the issue scientifically, but you have not realized that the hearing model is not up to the task you are working on..

I am firmly convinced that just the first order RLC effects are not what I am hearing, but I can easily believe that other more exotic effects that you start to list could be what's going on. That was absolutely not the context in which the whole RLC issue was being discussed on this thread. ..Perhaps, perhaps not..until the hearing is characterized, that statement is unconfirmed. The context of this thread is that we cannot hear RLC issues.."proven", by the application of circuit equations to a wholly inaccurate hearing threshold set..

There are people who essentially claim that if a pure 100nF inductor in series with a 1K Ohm resistor and 100pF to ground capacitor doesn't really affect the sound then neither can a cable with the same measurements. I keep trying to say that's true as far as it goes but it doesn't explain the issue. The cable may have those same parasitic reactances but it also has more complex things going on. It was always my contention that the other effects might explain the auditory differences...I've not stated either way on this issue. I am more interested in applying the equations to the real criteria for hearing, not the old one..

In discussions with other engineers we have considered things such as differential thermionic heating in connector junctions, the dielectric absorbtion you cite and things such as low quality diode junctions at grain boundaries. One big problem is that there is little test equipment that measures Micro effects while in the presense of Macro effects. i.e.what happens to tiny signals while significant current is flowing to the woofer, does it cross modulate? Its not all that hard to do, just very little commercial equipment does it....Hmmm...cool. I'm really beginning to like you...

Peltier and Seebeck effects are not symmetric..so, from physics, if this reaches a high enough level of conversion, there should be some signal non-linearities caused by non linear heat loss... Peltier defines the heat produced as proportional to the current, while Seebeck has the voltage proportional to the temp difference..for high impedance signal runs, the heat across the junction will be miniscule, therefore the seebeck conversion will be very very small, while peltier heat generation will be maximized due to little heating and small thermal gradient...

Again, both effects are incredibly small, and subsequent non linear loss is well below the threshold of detection for audio rate signals...not zero, but many orders of magnitude below the equipment.

Diodes at grain boundaries...hmmm..so far, the test guys here (I'm part of that group) haven't seen any such effects, but we only go up to 30 Kiloamps and look at the microvolt level. As such, only a upper limit of effect can be spoken of..I do feel, however, that this span of range is a tad beyond "high end audio"..

If you wish to discuss "micro-diodes", you have to first get around the fact that grain boundary interfaces are simply lattice discontinuities and the dimensions of the discontinuities are well within the mean free path of the "electrons". IOW, they really don't see the boundaries per se, but will only suffer a relatively minor increase in the number of collisions as a result of lattice defects. Given that at 300K, the mean free path for copper is about 6 orders of magnitude below the grain size, this incremental increase in resistive loss is, shall we say, of little concern?

This is a discussion group, not a sceintific journal. Short hand is acceptable, spending hours looking for holes in logic while ignoring the main subject benifits no one except the oversized ego. Example; a 1 inch square peg falling through a two inch round hole simply does not meet the definition of fit as used in this context. Shame on you. .This is the AUDIO LAB (boomy echoey voice)..scientific discussion is encouraged...go as deep as you wish...
You mentioned the hole and peg..it took about two seconds to come up with a response to that...;)

As I stated, that was the off topic fun stuff, and I did not ignore the main subject..so I kept it as last..

What you have missed, is WHY I responded to the hole and peg statement..obviously, it was too subtle..my fault..

You have calculated what simple RLC does to the signal, and then applied that result to the current outlandishly incorrect model of human hearing, and decided there was more to "cables" than can be explained using the RLC metrics..

You are guilty of trying to fit your square peg of RLC calculations, into the round hole of human hearing capabilities..ok, I was too subtle...shoot me...:D

This discussion is not over, not by a long shot...I hope we can continue this, I have good feelings about this..

Thank you.

Cheers, John

FLZapped
07-14-2005, 09:05 AM
Wow, boy, sure hard to argue with that. One can only hope you joined the school debating team. With such stunning repartee, with such carefully constructed and considered logic you must have been devastating to the opposition.


HAHAHHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAAHHA

This guy has been going on and on without any evidence to back his assertions up: even after multiple requests. At some point, one just has to be blunt.

-Bruce

FLZapped
07-14-2005, 09:26 AM
Anyone with a decent system can easily hear differences in 2 cables; one generic copper, Radio Shack style and the other, one of the sneered at high price models. The really amazing thing is that the difference will be there, whether you can explain it or not.

Uh, huh, under what controls?


Just listen, it's not that hard.

Maybe you should go over to this site and investigate Sheperd's Tones and the Tritone Paradox, and see just how hard listening can be. (requires JAVA)

http://www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/imager/contributions/flinn/Illusions/Illusions.html

-Bruce

FLZapped
07-14-2005, 10:13 AM
Whoa. Many of the discussions on these threads center around RLC models and cables. I have always maintained that these simplistic models do not explain what is going on. In particular a mathmatical model that uses only pure R, L and C such as a first order simulator, will quickly lead you to believe that the whole cables have signatures thing is nuts.

I don't think anyone has made any mention about how simple or complex a particular model of L, C, or R may or may not be.


Once you add second or third order effects such as dieletric absorbtion vs frequency, or current hysterysis of magnetic domains in cable alloys or skin effects you are no longer discussing the simple RLC model. The fact that a capacitor has a dielectric still doesn't excuse the generalization. People speak here in terms of asking for proof that a mathmatically perfect capacitor could cause the effects under discussion and it can not. So to many people, the fact that the simple capacitor model can not thereby means that the effect also can not exist.

And that has to be counterbalanced against the likelyhood of their ability to effect a circuit, when the circuit impedance is extremely low. In the case of an audio pre-amp, many are going to be 50 to 100 ohms output impedance. An audio power amplifier, will be orders of magnitude below that. One has to decide if it would be worth the effort to include secondary effects when they will most certainly be swamped out by the circuit impedance.

Jung in his paper on picking capacitors made the observation that as the circuit impedance went down, so did secondary effects.

This site will give you a general idea of how that works:

http://members.fortunecity.com/flzapped/ouch_intro.html

You will notice that the signal level created by piezo-electric effect decreases from nearly a volt peak-to-peak to about a half-millivolt peak-to-peak as the load is decreased from infinity to 100 ohms.

An example of a mylar capacitor model for dielectric effects can be found here:

http://www.national.com/rap/images/capsoak4.gif

Please note the extreme impedances involved and ask if you think it has much chance of impacting a circuit who's primary impedance is 50 ohms or less. Also consider this is for a 1uF (1 E-6) part and the capacitance of the average 6 foot interconnect cable will be 180pF (180E-12)

Certainly if I were designing a pre-amp for a piezo-electric guitar pick-up, or an instrument amp with 1,000,000 ohms circuit impedance I would be very careful about my choices. At 50 ohms(or less), I would hardly give it much thought.

-Bruce

hermanv
07-14-2005, 10:53 AM
If you use the human hearing model that we can only hear 20 to 20K, with monophonic JND parameters, then your statement is entirely correct.

You have missed one of my points..the criteria for judging the audibility of any effects is incorrect. You did not consider at all, the human hearing sensitivity to either ITD or IID, and it is these parameters which we humans use to discern the direction and distance of a sound source..Many people report significant changes in the imaging qualities of their systems when trying various "audiophile" cables. My room doesn't allow for good imaging, so the selecton process for cables that I like, ends up being based on two criterea; one is clarity, and the second is any reduction of aritifacts in the region of 2KHz to 5KHz. The region where to me many audio sins are commited. It happens to be more or less the peak sensitivity of human hearing and the brain seems quite good at localizing sound origination direction in this frequency band. This may well be learned from locating predators and avoidance of being some creatures lunch, so imaging or sound localization is a good fit.


So, it is moot to declare even simplistic RLC parameters as not having an effect, as your model for what we hear is so inaccurate..Once the criteria for what we hear w/r to soundstage is firmly established, then simple RLC can be re-calculated for the possibility of exceeding the threshold of audibility.
To me there is no distinction when it comes to the RLC model, as I do not consider it as a simple frequency or impedance invariant descriptor. Again, the bulk of discussion here is attempting to fit the wrong human hearing model to the problem..You have fallen into the same boat, as you have also erred in this fashion. I like the fact that you seem to be attacking the issue scientifically, but you have not realized that the hearing model is not up to the task you are working on.. I am looking for an explanantion of what I and others hear. I don't think its the value of the cable capacitance even though it might be the capacitor (I mean the value seems too small to explain the change but the quality of the capacitor might). The problem in these discussions is that the discussion gets continuosly derailed by people who apparently have not heard the effect and therfore feel challenged to prove it doesn't exist. Since you can't prove a negative they turn this on its head and demand proof of the existence of sound quality changes with cables. Irritating, because a search for some kind of proof is exactly the intent. I would like to find a scientific proof and hope some discussions will help lead to one. Many people have measured cables very carefully, the results are published all over the net but the numerical values are quite small (yes, I know so is the effect) but the effects of these reactances are linear whereas what I hear sure sounds like fewer or more products a much more complex interaction requiring the existence of non-linearities. Where in a traditional cable are these to be found? I also find it amusing that one should deny one self the benefits of a superior delivery mechanism when the reason for the superiority is not documented


Peltier and Seebeck effects are not symmetric..so, from physics, if this reaches a high enough level of conversion, there should be some signal non-linearities caused by non linear heat loss... Peltier defines the heat produced as proportional to the current, while Seebeck has the voltage proportional to the temp difference..for high impedance signal runs, the heat across the junction will be miniscule, therefore the seebeck conversion will be very very small, while peltier heat generation will be maximized due to little heating and small thermal gradient...

Again, both effects are incredibly small, and subsequent non linear loss is well below the threshold of detection for audio rate signals...not zero, but many orders of magnitude below the equipment.

Diodes at grain boundaries...hmmm..so far, the test guys here (I'm part of that group) haven't seen any such effects, but we only go up to 30 Kiloamps and look at the microvolt level. As such, only a upper limit of effect can be spoken of..I do feel, however, that this span of range is a tad beyond "high end audio"..

If you wish to discuss "micro-diodes", you have to first get around the fact that grain boundary interfaces are simply lattice discontinuities and the dimensions of the discontinuities are well within the mean free path of the "electrons". IOW, they really don't see the boundaries per se, but will only suffer a relatively minor increase in the number of collisions as a result of lattice defects. Given that at 300K, the mean free path for copper is about 6 orders of magnitude below the grain size, this incremental increase in resistive loss is, shall we say, of little concern? The effects of the diodes I am visualizing would show up only at micro or nano Amps, the other end of the scale from where youi appear to be instrumenting. I am not trying to build a case that this must be the effect, I am tryng to build a case that some kind of non-linear behaviour would end up as a tidy explanation for what I hear. At least for the cables I like best, complex musical passages show the greatest improvement in resolution or clarity. Once again I am driven towards an intermodulation or product generation explanation.


You have calculated what simple RLC does to the signal, and then applied that result to the current outlandishly incorrect model of human hearing, and decided there was more to "cables" than can be explained using the RLC metrics..

You are guilty of trying to fit your square peg of RLC calculations, into the round hole of human hearing capabilities..ok, I was too subtle...shoot me...:D

Cable A sounds like this, cable B sounds like that; some people have described the changes as changes in frequency response. The cables I preffer certainly un-mask sounds at the frequency extremes that were inaudible prior to the cable change. This could easily lead you to conclude that the frequency response had changed with the cable change. Going back to those people on the web who have carefully measured cables in a way that highlights RLC effects there is indeed a change in frequency response and the degree of change is the same magnatude range of calculated effects, for example a couple of hundred picoFarads at 10Khz causing a change of a few hudredths of a dB. It is small and linear. I have owned equipment with tone controls there is no comparison of the effect of adjusting a tone control knob and substituting a "good" cable for a "poor" one.


This discussion is not over, not by a long shot...I hope we can continue this, I have good feelings about this..

Thank you.
Cheers, John
I am open to any number of explanations, some feel that is is a human hearing learning curve, curious, because to learn to hear a difference, a difference needs to first be present.

I hear a change, others hear a change. A whole industry has sprung up to service the demand. Certainly some of them are selling snake oil, this is true for most any industry. When I try cables that magazine reviewers say are worth a listen, I find them superior to the garden variety plain everyday consumer interconnects and to zip cord even when the zip cord is an absurdly large guage. Friends and neighbors that are not audiophiles easily hear what I hear, we agree on the effect but do have serious problems with the descriptive language. Human language evolved in an environment absent of electronic aritifacts and our everyday language is poor at describing electronic errors of sound reproduction.

jneutron
07-14-2005, 11:28 AM
This may well be learned from locating predators and avoidance of being some creatures lunch, so imaging or sound localization is a good fit. Agreed. And nothing in the research delves heavily into imaging and localization.

I am looking for an explanantion of what I and others hear. A good thing.

The problem in these discussions is that the discussion gets continuosly derailed by people who apparently have not heard the effect and therfore feel challenged to prove it doesn't exist. Perhaps discussions with others..but not me. I have not listened for any difference, having no good system upon which to draw, however, my perception of one is of no concern to the discussions.

I would like to find a scientific proof and hope some discussions will help lead to one. Concur.

The effects of the diodes I am visualizing would show up only at micro or nano Amps, the other end of the scale from where youi appear to be instrumenting. A diode is a device with a non-linear I/V curve..as such, it easily spotted, even at the microamp level. I have seen none, however, I personally at a previous job, only tested down to the fempto and atto-amp level...perhaps you need to look lower??;)
Measurement for "micro-diodes" has failed miserably to find any. Initial positive findings have been shown to be in error...this being due to the failure to baseline the equipment capabilities..what was seen was far below the inherent noise in the equipment, and inaccurately classed as distortion artifacts rather that what they were, equipment artifacts.


I am not trying to build a case that this must be the effect, I am tryng to build a case that some kind of non-linear behaviour would end up as a tidy explanation for what I hear. At least for the cables I like best, complex musical passages show the greatest improvement in resolution or clarity. Once again I am driven towards an intermodulation or product generation explanation. Since you applied the incorrect human hearing model, you have bypassed the most obvious solution, that being the fact that your metric is incorrect.

You should be driven towards the simplest explanation..not ones which require re-writing physics. Non linearities are definitely way down on the plausibility scale..


I am open to any number of explanations, some feel that is is a human hearing learning curve, curious, because to learn to hear a difference, a difference needs to first be present. We in fact, need time to re-aquire our sense of imaging when the cues we use for that are changed..there is a "learning curve", more aptly referred to as "settling time".
Two speakers present us with three images for any virtual image in the soundfield..

1. The desired one, which is the result of the sounds reaching the desired ear..left to left, right to right.
2. The right sideband image, the result of the right speaker finally making it to the right ear, providing the temporally accurate image AT the right speaker.
3. The left sideband image.

Because the right and left sideband images correlate absolutely with the desired virtual image in waveform, the human brain learns to ignore the side images, leaving the desired one. However, this is not what occurs in nature..in nature, only the desired virtual image is there, as that is actually where the source is..no sideband images.

When a change is made to your system, any change, if it alters ITD, IID, or placement location relative to the ears, it takes a while for the human mind to re-aquire the ability to "ignore" the sidebands.. this is the settling time..

And, it is not measured using instruments of any kind...

We localize based on ear to ear time and amplitude differences at first order. The time differences are in the low microsecond range, and the amplitude is in the .05 dB range. These are the kinds of differences that are the metrics for localization..and the ones you should be using.



but do have serious problems with the descriptive language. Human language evolved in an environment absent of electronic aritifacts and our everyday language is poor at describing electronic errors of sound reproduction.
Problems with descriptive language????you are a master of understatement.:D

Cheers, John

hermanv
07-14-2005, 12:22 PM
We in fact, need time to re-aquire our sense of imaging when the cues we use for that are changed..there is a "learning curve", more aptly referred to as "settling time".
Two speakers present us with three images for any virtual image in the soundfield..

1. The desired one, which is the result of the sounds reaching the desired ear..left to left, right to right.
2. The right sideband image, the result of the right speaker finally making it to the right ear, providing the temporally accurate image AT the right speaker.
3. The left sideband image.

Because the right and left sideband images correlate absolutely with the desired virtual image in waveform, the human brain learns to ignore the side images, leaving the desired one. However, this is not what occurs in nature..in nature, only the desired virtual image is there, as that is actually where the source is..no sideband images.

When a change is made to your system, any change, if it alters ITD, IID, or placement location relative to the ears, it takes a while for the human mind to re-aquire the ability to "ignore" the sidebands.. this is the settling time..

And, it is not measured using instruments of any kind...

We localize based on ear to ear time and amplitude differences at first order. The time differences are in the low microsecond range, and the amplitude is in the .05 dB range. These are the kinds of differences that are the metrics for localization..and the ones you should be using.
I do not have a problem with using imaging to help ascertain the "cable effect". But I fear it may be a diversion. I am developing a new speaker with a fellow engineer and audiophile. Becasue of costs we built only one prototype and used a passive sum of right and left channels for our "voicing" tests.

As we improved the speaker design with better drivers and a series of crossover improvements we reached a plateau. We had both heard better sound from speakers we couldn't afford (the primary reason we decided to build our own). So we started updgrading the electronics. We bought a better outboard D to A for the CD player, built an all passive pre-amp using so called "high end" passive components and purchased a better (more expensive highly regarded) power amplifier. So during testing we naturally experimented with cabling. Once again a superior cable was quite easy to find in spite of the system already making use of a highly rated and regarded product. Having done all this we exposed another layer or two of the speaker design onion, and our design now competes favorably with speakers that retail for $20,000 and up.

But (drum roll please) all of this was in monophonic:). So while imaging may well be improved by more accurate time alignment, better group delay or more equalized cable loss, a good cable just plain improves the sound quality even of a mono channel.

As an engineer I knew all along that "it's just wire". I was stongly pre-disposed to find no such effect but it was easy to hear. So native curiousity is a strong motivator for finding an explanation.

There are two other good reasons to work out why:
1. Once understood, are there other things that can be done to further minimize the negative effects on sound quality?
2. The very best cables have astronomical prices, up to thousands per meter. If the effect is well understood, can you now make a truly good cable for 5 bucks?

Current "high end" cable manufacturer throw all kinds of "magic" into the mix. Ultra pure metals either copper or silver, exotic wire forming techniques (continuos casting, annealing, drawn through diamond dies, etc.) and ultra exotic connector materials or platings. With a poor understanding of the effect how much of this expense contributes to the desired result?

There is a third realated reason to understand the effect of cables on sound quality, currently no realiable means exists of using test equipment to predict which audio products sound best. There was a paradox a few years back when the introduction of Op-amp circuits and high degrees of feedback allowed manufacturers to acheive distortion levels 10 or a 100 times better than previous designs. The resulting amplifiers all sounded awful but measured very well. A whole series of theories quickly sprang up to explain the discrepancy. The remaining two SID and TID (slewing induced distortion and transient induced distortion) were found valid but still rather poor indicators of the end result visa vie how good a given piece of electronic equipment will sound.

I need to stop for today and earn my keep.

jneutron
07-14-2005, 12:41 PM
I do not have a problem with using imaging to help ascertain the "cable effect". But I fear it may be a diversion. I am developing a new speaker with a fellow engineer and audiophile. Becasue of costs we built only one prototype and used a passive sum of right and left channels for our "voicing" tests.

As we improved the speaker design with better drivers and a series of crossover improvements we reached a plateau. We had both heard better sound from speakers we couldn't afford (the primary reason we decided to build our own). So we started updgrading the electronics. We bought a better outboard D to A for the CD player, built an all passive pre-amp using so called "high end" passive components and purchased a better (more expensive highly regarded) power amplifier. So during testing we naturally experimented with cabling. Once again a superior cable was quite easy to find in spite of the system already making use of a highly rated and regarded product.

But (drum roll please) all of this was in monophonic:). So while imaging may well be improved by more accurate time alignment, better group delay or more equalized cable loss, a good cable just plain improves the sound quality even of a mono channel.

As an engineer I knew all along that "it's just wire". I was stongly pre-disposed to find no such effect but it was easy to hear. So native curiousity is a strong motivator for finding an explanation.
Make two identical low inductance loads with low b dot error...keep them under a nanohenry, and make em 4 ohms.

Then do a side by side differential with speaker wires of various constructions.

You will find lots of differences.

Then look at why two or three drivers would have big issues with wavefront reconstruction at and near the crossover points. Youze is makin a phased array radar....the very low cable reactances cause the crossover points to scan based on frequency...doesn't take much in the way of inter-driver delay to cause it..I have not constructed a model for vertical localization, I don't know where to start on that...just horizontal..

Make the speaker cable as low R as possible, with Z equal to the load, and the lowest effective dielectric constant. It's trivial to get DC effective down to 2.7, I can get that down to 1.05 with some creative "fun"...that will be the best..everything else is making whoopie with the sound..

Compare the RLC for all the cables you tried. You'll find correlation..


With a poor understanding of the effect how much of this expense contributes to the desired result?
Until it is engineered properly, it's nothing but WAG's. And some drive 911's as a result.

Cheers, John

PS..do not fear "diversions". Test them for accuracy of modelling..

FLZapped
07-15-2005, 07:08 AM
The effects of the diodes I am visualizing would show up only at micro or nano Amps, the other end of the scale from where youi appear to be instrumenting. I am not trying to build a case that this must be the effect, I am tryng to build a case that some kind of non-linear behaviour would end up as a tidy explanation for what I hear. At least for the cables I like best, complex musical passages show the greatest improvement in resolution or clarity. Once again I am driven towards an intermodulation or product generation explanation.


Visualize this: Commercial comunication repeater systems are licensed up to 350 watts of transmitter power. At the same time, they are running a receiver with a sensitivity anywhere from -113 to -119dBm(0.5 to 0.25uV).

Converting to common parameters we find that 350 watts is +55dBm. This means a differential of 168 to 174dB. So if this noise exists, it is greater than 174 dB down from the generator.

-Bruce

musicoverall
07-18-2005, 01:53 PM
Prove it.



Prove any such thing actually exists.



Prove it.



Yawn......prove it.

-Bruce
(Astounded at just how idiot final statement is)

Never fear, Bruce. It's not just your final statement that's "idiot". ;)

Seriously, you remind me of the rest of my class way back when I was in the second grade - a few centuries ago. "Prove it, prove it, prove it". Hmmm... you want ME to prove something to YOU to allay YOUR skepticism? Sure, Bruce, I'll get right on that - because I care SO much! :)

FLZapped
07-19-2005, 08:04 AM
Never fear, Bruce. It's not just your final statement that's "idiot". ;)

I see I was having a good week for typos.



Seriously, you remind me of the rest of my class way back when I was in the second grade - a few centuries ago. "Prove it, prove it, prove it". Hmmm... you want ME to prove something to YOU to allay YOUR skepticism?

You keep making claims, one after another, all you have to do is fill them up so they aren't empty.



Sure, Bruce, I'll get right on that - because I care SO much! :)

That now puts you in the realm of a troll.

-Bruce

musicoverall
07-19-2005, 11:11 AM
I see I was having a good week for typos.


-Bruce

Not to mention trolling.

As far as my making claims, it's ok if you think they're empty... or if you think they're claims at all. My advice to newbies is to listen for themselves. If that's a claim, I'm guilty. And of course my final point was that I couldn't possibly be expected to solve your dilemma of skepticism. I think it's been pointed out many times that no amount of proof will satisfy the naysayers, short of some engineer/scientist type that you know and respect coming out of the woodwork with new measurements. I took some blind cable tests, as evidenced by this thread, and I've done what I needed to do for my own skepticism. I now have the system I want and each component, including cables, adds its own sonic signature. Believe it or not, as you prefer.

bjornb17
07-30-2005, 08:37 AM
Come on you two children, break up the fight before i tell the principle! :)

krabapple
09-28-2005, 08:17 PM
It sort of unclear if the pool exists. The author says he has contributed $200 and others would contribute. He also says that he'll pay $1,000 if you go to England , I didn't see an actual address, bank account nor a enforcable contract.

ps. He is asking for +/-0.1dB, sort of reasonable where +/-0.01 dB is not. It is possible that two identical cables would not pass the +/-0.01dB hurdle especially if they are hand made. It also unclear where on could find an instrument that was 0.01 dB accurate. The best I've used has a resolution of 0.01 DB but nowhere near that accuracy (that's about one tenth of 1%; if you read the fine print 2% is common 1% rare for RMS meters).

It's *k*rabapple, and yes, 0.01 was a typo and would be totally unreasonable -- 0.1 dB level matching is what I should have written. Sorry about that.




According to his rules, one could easily cheat. He checks at 100, 1000 and 10,000Hz. A notch filter at 200-800 Hz would pass his rules yet any fool could hear it was there (you'd put it in one of those little boxes MIT cables seem to like so much).

Well, of course any cables that *passed* would be subjected to a test for just such 'cheating'. No one expects to pay out money for a cable that is acting as an equalizer.
The stipulation is that two cables that measure the same, will sound the same.


This offer may have been made in the passion of cable discussions, it seems a little questionable.

You are free to clarify as many details about it as you like, on RAHE.

krabapple
09-28-2005, 08:19 PM
After reading krabapple's link to re.audio.high-end, it looks to me like they are saying they can make a zip cord cord sound like any audiophile cable by altering the zip cord (e.g., "add a few passive components to some zip cord to achieve the same FR"). It isn't clear whether they also would want to be able to alter the audiophile cable.

Requiring you to identify the cable correctly 15 times out of 20 to win the money seems to set the p value bar a little high(i.e., 0.02). Usually in hypothesis testing a p value of 0.05 is chosen, which I believe would be 14 out of 20. It's not much difference, but I guess they want an edge in case you get very lucky or hear a difference in the cables.

In science, you want p<0.05, not p=0.05. In any case 14/20 is p=0.058 , which is greater than 0.05. 16/20 would be the minimum -- and even then such a score would arguably justify re-testing (as would 14/20).


Without seeing a full description of their rules, I can't comment further on the cable challenge. Before participating in such a test, however, I would want everything in writing and in the form of an enforceable contract. Otherwise, you may have a difficult time collecting the money if you win.

It's hard to beat someone at their game.

Feel free to post to RAHE to arrange the details of your test, which can of couse be written up when conditions are agreed on. The only 'game' is a the application of standard scientific controls to a listening test.

krabapple
09-28-2005, 08:30 PM
Revisiting this thread reminds me to ask, where's jneutron these days? I was very interested in his rigorous investigations of the possible audible differences in cables (even though I suspect he is chasing a wild goose) ...but I haven't seen hide nor hair of him here or on audioholics for months.

Mash
11-21-2005, 06:28 PM
My ears were burning, Mr. musicoverall, so I stopped by to quench the fire.

I am glad, Mr. musicoverall, that you held your wire test and that you satisfied yourself while doing so. Your results seemed mildly positive about there being audible differences between your test wires, and I notice that the party-faithful here have given you mildly positive congratulations for your study. I feel that had your results been over-the-top wildly positive the party-faithful here would have given you wildly positive congratulations on your brilliant work. Alternatively, if you had found that there were ZERO differences between the wires in your test then the party-faithful would have told you to get new batteries for your hearing aid, while Estat parsed your report to death with witty or half-witty rebuttals following every parsing. So I think you showed wisdom in what you reported, especially given that your data sample was far too small with too few positives to be statistically positive.

My last visit was 8 March 2005. I spend essentially no time here now because I do not feel like engaging in endless discussions of how many angels can dance on a pin head. Foo-foo dust sermons are irrelevant to me. I have insufficient time now to take our boat out for cruises, and my sound system can reproduce a grand piano well enough without needing foo-foo dust or miracle wires. I just set up HDTV in our bedroom, including having a complete capability to up scale all DVD’s and also VCR tapes into HD. My next step is to add the Velodyne Servo-15 that I have on hand to the HDTV system to support the Magnepans. Time to move on.

I do notice that this little area has become, as some one had once predicted, a moribund ghetto. I suspect many others will ultimately become weary of those sermons to the choir so popular in the other areas……..

Hey, Skep- I saw you were recently here! Good to see that you are still alive! My next little hobby is electric powered R/C airplanes. I really enjoyed flying real airplanes. Did you know that for $600 (on sale) you could buy an electric-powered 72 inch wingspan Predator airplane that will fly for up to 1.5 hours and rise up to 8000 feet above sea level? This plane has an R/C radio with a one-mile range, and you can add a camera that will take, and radio back to you, pictures of that young honey practicing nude sunbathing down the street. Not that you ever would, of course, actually LOOK……Visit Draganfly.com. The $170 Multiplex Easystar is supposed to be the very best trainer for newbies and it is a really slick looking 54 inch wingspan bird. Search the web. This is one hobby where foo-foo dust will never help anyone; in the final result you will either be able to fly your airplane or you will NOT be able to fly your airplane.

musicoverall
11-23-2005, 01:14 PM
my sound system can reproduce a grand piano well enough ...

If you're happy, I'm happy. Congrats on having a system that performs to your expectations and for finding the time to enjoy other hobbies.

I, too, am weary of the endless debate. It'll never be settled, I'm sure, hence the "endless" tag. I'm not now, nor have I ever been, interested in recruiting for the "party faithful". People will either hear differences or not. I do and I reported on them. I'm satisfied that my first impressions of the cables (sighted) were essentially confirmed, if not fully quantified in terms of degree. Folks can make of my report what they will. And I don't use "foo-foo dust" anymore because even though it extended the bass of my system, it created a mess on the carpet....

mystic
11-24-2005, 10:22 PM
In science, you want p<0.05, not p=0.05. In any case 14/20 is p=0.058 , which is greater than 0.05. 16/20 would be the minimum -- and even then such a score would arguably justify re-testing (as would 14/20).



Feel free to post to RAHE to arrange the details of your test, which can of couse be written up when conditions are agreed on. The only 'game' is a the application of standard scientific controls to a listening test.


I apologize for the late reply, but I overlooked the post. No, I'm not interested in doing one of these tests and probably never will be. My comments were to those forum members who might be interested in accepting the challenge. Since I haven't heard about any members taking part, maybe they think the test would be too difficult to pass or isn't fair and square.

More people might be willing to accept the challenge if the bar were a bit lower.
If you would be satisfied with a p<0.05, how about 13 correct out of 18 trials? I believe that would be p = 0.048. It seems to me 13/18 would be easier than 15/20.

While I doubt individuals conducting such a test would consciously do anything dishonest to affect the outcome, I would find it troubling that they have a stake in that outcome. The fact that they are presenting a challenge suggests bias. Providing full details about the test, including descriptions of possible limitations and weakneses might gain trust.

Regardless, you probably aren't going to get many takers. Do you really expect many members of this forum to go to the trouble and expense? Perhaps rather than trying to run some kind of contest, those making the cable altering claim could do tests on a lot of different audiophile cables themselves and tell us what they have found. It would be interesting to hear about the details. Are such results already available?

Mike Anderson
11-25-2005, 11:06 AM
This is one statement I wholeheartedly agree with. Your tests prove nothing.

There weren't nearly enough trials to be statisitically significant. If you flipped a coin 13 times and it came up heads 10 times in a row, that does not demonstrate that the coin isn't fair and that after 1000 tries or 1,000,000 tries it wouldn't be nearly 50%/50%.


I'm a statistician, and I can tell you this is incorrect. You're thinking of the N required for a calculation based on the normal approximation. But here, it's possible to calculate an exact p-value, and the N can be much smaller.

For example, suppose you flip a coin five times, and it comes up heads on all five flips. Under the null hypothesis (that the coin is fair), the chance of that happening is (0.5)^5 = 0.03125, which is significant at the 5% level. So we can reject the null hypothesis.

Here, the calculation is a little more complicated because we have to account for all the different ways a person can get a number of correct guesses. For that we can use the binomial coefficient, or (N choose K). (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BinomialCoefficient.html)

For example, the number of ways of getting 10 out of 13 is (13 choose 10) = 286. Under the null hypothesis (that the chance of guessing the correct cable is 0.5), the chance of getting any one sequence of 10/13 right is 0.5^13. Since there are 286 possible sequences, the chance of getting 10/13 is 286*(0.5^13).

Now to calculate the p-value we also want to find the chance of getting 11, 12, and 13 right. So the full calculation is:

(13 choose 10)*(0.5^13) +
(13 choose 11)*(0.5^13) +
(13 choose 12)*(0.5^13) +
(13 choose 13)*(0.5^13) = 0.0461 (as posted earlier)

Therefore the result is significant at the 0.05 level, and we can reject the null hypothesis.

Keep in mind, however, that the 0.05 threshold is an arbitrary selection; perhaps the original poster would like to do more trials to see if he can beat 0.01.

Mike Anderson
11-25-2005, 11:16 AM
The procedure was flawed. Without rapidly switching, you can't be sure there weren't other variables at work you weren't aware of. Did you just happen to listen to one cable on evenings you came home tired from work? Were there any other coincidences you didn't consider.


Again, this is incorrect.

The whole point of flipping a coin each evening to choose the cable is to avoid these problems. The argument that there were any such coincidences (which would be correlated with cable selection only by chance, since he flipped a coin to select cables) is ruled out with a confidence level of 0.0461.

Any valid attack on the methodology of the experiment has to argue that it wasn't truly blind, i.e. that he was clued into the selection of the cable in some way.

hermanv
11-25-2005, 01:55 PM
Hi Mike;

About fifteen years ago Stereophile ran some double blind cable listening test. They used 10 listeners and three of the ten got results beyond chance one of them got a very high percentage correct.

The debate about the validity of the test raged on. A member of The Boston Audiophile Society in particular reasoned that since the test results MUST be random, any listener would eventually score very high so they proclaimed the test as not proving the result that Stereophile said it did. Letters raged back and forth for months (actually this debate rages to this day).

I am an engineer by trade not a statistician, but I am exposed to statistical data. It seems to me that you can't always apply the same rules to data that has a skew as you can to truly random events. If you will allow me an egregious example: A four minute mile was run in 1954, thousands of people could not duplicate the result therefore statistically it never happened.

Not a reasonable example, but illustrative of confusing notions. The right answer to the cable test dilemma of course, is to repeat the test so the sample size is large. The problem is that even a small sample size test takes all day and the participants loose interest, especially those who claim to be able to hear the difference and are wondering why they need to endure hardship to convince anyone else. They are quite happy with their own belief set.

Worse yet are those who interpret the test requirements as follows "If one person can hear a difference then all people must be able to hear a difference." This is equally ludicrous, not everyone is a professional wine taster, I have no problem assuming a professional can taste details in wine I can not.

http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing.htm
http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/wishful_thinking.htm

Any comments would be welcome, of course if you disagree with my forgone conclusion then you must be a ___________ (fill in the blank) :).

Mike Anderson
11-25-2005, 02:50 PM
A member of The Boston Audiophile Society in particular reasoned that since the test results MUST be random, any listener would eventually score very high so they proclaimed the test as not proving the result that Stereophile said it did.

I don't follow this. If what they mean is that do enough tests, and eventually someone will score high just by chance, well then that's why you have to include the N's from all your tests when you calculate your p-values.



I am an engineer by trade not a statistician, but I am exposed to statistical data. It seems to me that you can't always apply the same rules to data that has a skew as you can to truly random events. If you will allow me an egregious example: A four minute mile was run in 1954, thousands of people could not duplicate the result therefore statistically it never happened.

I'm not sure what you mean by "skew" here (that has a technical meaning, it's a defined parameter of a probability distribution); I think you mean "outlier".

The rules you can apply to data depend on how the data are generated. Randomization is a powerful method that allows you to apply some well-defined rules (assuming you do the randomization properly.)



The right answer to the cable test dilemma of course, is to repeat the test so the sample size is large.

Again, the point of my above post is to emphasize that you don't necessarily need a large sample size. If you do five listenings, and the test subject is able to differentiate between the two sources in all five listenings, that lets you reject the null hypothesis at the 0.05 level.

You only need a larger sample if it's hard to detect the difference between the two sources (i.e. the test subject gets numbers closer to 50% correct), or if you want to reject the null hypothesis with a greater level of confidence.



Worse yet are those who interpret the test requirements as follows "If one person can hear a difference then all people must be able to hear a difference." This is equally ludicrous, not everyone is a professional wine taster, I have no problem assuming a professional can taste details in wine I can not.

I would agree with this. The test the original poster performed was to determine whether he could detect a difference between the cables. Certainly, a deaf person would not!

musicoverall
11-26-2005, 08:45 AM
Any valid attack on the methodology of the experiment has to argue that it wasn't truly blind, i.e. that he was clued into the selection of the cable in some way.

...the test was essentially double blind because the tester swapped the cables when I was not there and then he left before I got home to listen. Certainly I could have checked out the cables that were connected on any given day. But I saw no point in cheating. I would have been fine with the prospect of hearing no differences - I could have sold the cables and recouped my money. And since I'm not obsessive about being correct all of the time, I found no possible value in peeking. I did understand, however, that I may have been called out on this and accused of lying. I have no problem with that, either - since I was only experimenting for my own edification and not to convince anyone else. I posted my test because I thought others might find it interesting and fodder for discussion, not to convince.

hermanv
11-26-2005, 10:45 AM
Hi Mike;

Thanks for your insights. I have been looking for the raw data from the Stereophile tests but have been unable to find it. I have found anecdotal references where it was stated that there were 10 listeners and 16 trials, without the hard data it becomes impossible to analyze who (if anyone) is bending the numbers to agree with their own subjective beliefs.

I have found a lot of conclusions and statements of people claiming "successful" double blind cable comparisons (in this context, sucessful meant the ability to hear a difference) but getting acess to the raw test results using only an internet search has proven most difficult.

I promised I would find support for my belief that cables do in fact sound different and that ABX studies had been published. I remembered reading some of the results, but the only references I can now find do not supply the raw data.

Nevertheless below are some claimed positive tests results. Negative results do abound, but the questions is: is there a difference? If only one person reliably hears that difference then there must be one. The fact that a large number of people get null results doesn't prove there isn't a difference, only that they couldn't hear it.

The first result is this very thread
musicoverall an enterprizing (and brave) individual set up a double blind speaker cable test. Although the results did not meet the 95% confidence they were well above random. This was inspite of the test being made arbitrarily difficult because it was arranged for each single cable test session to occur with a 24 hour interval, this long delay requires a very long acoustic memory..
http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=10620

From the Cardas site: "Blind Testing"
Q.) Has Cardas ever engaged in any blind testing of its cables?

A.) Sure in the early days many, but now days there is so much product in the field and so much agreement on the character of various cables that setting up a double blind would seem silly to most high-end fanatics. However, the recording industry is very cautious and guarded about changes because the stakes are quite high, so a few years ago there was a double blind test done by what is I suppose the top mastering facility in the world, Grundman Mastering. The type of test is one often used in the industry to sort things out. The reason for the test was not to determine whether or not cables sounded different, that was already a given, the tests were to determine which cable sounded best and why.

In this test new mastering facilities were being built in the US and in Japan and cables were requested from all the leading suppliers from Belden to Transparent. Various cuts were mastered to CD changing only the cables. The CD's were sent to a panel of engineers and others and the results tabulated. None of the listeners knew what the difference was between the cuts. The results were easily quantifiable. I think it took a year to complete all the comparisons, in the end, two of the many cables compared proved profoundly superior to the rest. Grundman is now wired with Cardas Neutral Reference. - George Cardas

I also found the following, again without hard support data:
http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/i3.htm
......The results I present in this note are based on comparing one cable to another, under blind (or often, double blind) conditions, where levels were always checked for compliance to +/- 0.1 dB, and the comparisons varied one aspect of the cable at a time, i.e., one cable might be identical, except the insulation was foamed PE instead of foamed PP, etc. or the wires were bare copper for one, and tinned copper for the other, etc.

So what I am saying, is that not only did I reliably identify different cables, but I was able to identify a single cable variable at a time. Dozens and dozens of different coaxial and twisted pair cables were listened to, over the course of hundreds of hours of listening tests, stretching over the course of years of effort.

Summary
So in summary I failed in my mission to provide skeptics with hard raw data supporting the contention that cables sound different. For me they do, I am happy with the belief that my system has benefited by careful selection and choice of both interconnect and speaker cables. In my system, cable costs are about 15% of the total investment.

Mash
11-26-2005, 07:00 PM
Unless you people are in the business of making and peddling (expensive) “magic audio wires”, why on earth are you so obsessed with this “wires” topic? When I started the Hi-Fi hobby the goal was to accurately RE-produce live performances in our homes because often we could not get to a recital venue or symphony hall. Hence the hobby was called High Fidelity.

Sometime or other this hobby became perverted into everything EXCEPT meeting the goal of reproducing live performances in your homes. One chap seems to have spent maybe $5000 on wires just because they looked nice and he “could afford them”. I spent $500 on matched mono Futterman amps and another $400 to later re-tube my mono Futterman amps and have them modified to incorporate the NYAL auto-biasing scheme. So for $900 I have amps that, when combined with my Tympani, can reproduce concert grand pianos in my home that sound just like the many concert grand pianos I have listened to in recital.

[We Futterman owners also rewired our Tympani to higher resistance, the 4-ohm Tympani we rewired to 16 ohms and the 8-ohm Tympani we rewired to 32 ohms. Talk about realistic reproduction of music in the home!]

I even heard a lecture on how different grand pianos are rebuilt. But people who spend their time sitting around listening to wires are a sad bunch indeed. The goal is listening to MUSIC, people, not wires!

Hey, Skeptic, you should chill at the Darwin awards website and read the (often funny, but not for the star) stories of how so many people improve the human gene pool by doing something stupid to remove themselves from it (and this world). The point being that if people here want to spend their worldly wealth on wires, why not let them? Remember that being a retired millionaire is not going to be that comfortable if EVERYONE is a retired millionaire. So let these dudes waste their money in peace! I remember lots of people who made more money than I once made and now I can buy them and give them to charity. You can do the same. So, chill!

Skeptic, maybe we need “financial Darwin awards” ? Nah- I don’t want the competition when I go to look at more land.

E-Stat
11-28-2005, 01:01 PM
Hey, Skeptic...
I think you'll find he posts over at AA now as "Soundmind", mostly in the Outside Forum.

rw

musicoverall
11-28-2005, 02:18 PM
Unless you people are in the business of making and peddling (expensive) “magic audio wires”, why on earth are you so obsessed with this “wires” topic? When I started the Hi-Fi hobby the goal was to accurately RE-produce live performances in our homes because often we could not get to a recital venue or symphony hall. Hence the hobby was called High Fidelity.

Sometime or other this hobby became perverted into everything EXCEPT meeting the goal of reproducing live performances in your homes. One chap seems to have spent maybe $5000 on wires just because they looked nice and he “could afford them”. I spent $500 on matched mono Futterman amps and another $400 to later re-tube my mono Futterman amps and have them modified to incorporate the NYAL auto-biasing scheme. So for $900 I have amps that, when combined with my Tympani, can reproduce concert grand pianos in my home that sound just like the many concert grand pianos I have listened to in recital.

[We Futterman owners also rewired our Tympani to higher resistance, the 4-ohm Tympani we rewired to 16 ohms and the 8-ohm Tympani we rewired to 32 ohms. Talk about realistic reproduction of music in the home!]

I even heard a lecture on how different grand pianos are rebuilt. But people who spend their time sitting around listening to wires are a sad bunch indeed. The goal is listening to MUSIC, people, not wires!

Hey, Skeptic, you should chill at the Darwin awards website and read the (often funny, but not for the star) stories of how so many people improve the human gene pool by doing something stupid to remove themselves from it (and this world). The point being that if people here want to spend their worldly wealth on wires, why not let them? Remember that being a retired millionaire is not going to be that comfortable if EVERYONE is a retired millionaire. So let these dudes waste their money in peace! I remember lots of people who made more money than I once made and now I can buy them and give them to charity. You can do the same. So, chill!

Skeptic, maybe we need “financial Darwin awards” ? Nah- I don’t want the competition when I go to look at more land.

I'm obsessed with music and the most accurate reproduction of it, as you claim to be. Since wire is a part of that, I suppose one could argue that I'm obsessed with wire as well. It's part of maximizing the performance of my system. The live performance in my room goal has become closer to a reality with the addition of higher performance cabling. I know you disagree and I wouldn't dream of trying to persuade you otherwise. If you're happy, I'm happy for you.

E-Stat, wasn't Soundmind/Skeptic banned from AA?

E-Stat
11-28-2005, 02:52 PM
I'm obsessed with music and the most accurate reproduction of it, as you claim to be. Since wire is a part of that, I suppose one could argue that I'm obsessed with wire as well. It's part of maximizing the performance of my system. The live performance in my room goal has become closer to a reality with the addition of higher performance cabling. I know you disagree and I wouldn't dream of trying to persuade you otherwise. If you're happy, I'm happy for you.
Well said. You might similarly say I'm obsessed with bass traps in that I use them all around my listening room. It's a pity he hasn't had the chance to hear a similar system to his using 20.1s driven by Joule Electra OTL amps using Valhalla throughout as I have. He might be surprised!


E-Stat, wasn't Soundmind/Skeptic banned from AA?
Perhaps, but he did pipe up earlier this month on one of his pet topics, negative feedback. Clearly, he did not find many like minded posters in the audio forums.

rw

hermanv
11-28-2005, 03:10 PM
......But people who spend their time sitting around listening to wires are a sad bunch indeed. The goal is listening to MUSIC, people, not wires!. Amazingly enough, you are correct. I tried this and found the wires actually made no sound at all, right up to the point where I pressed he "play" button on my CD player.

Clearly the skeptics were correct all along; wires make no sound. Maybe this explains the whole cable debate, those who can't hear the effect of different cables, forgot to press "play"?

musicoverall
11-29-2005, 05:07 AM
It's a pity he hasn't had the chance to hear a similar system to his using 20.1s driven by Joule Electra OTL amps using Valhalla throughout as I have. He might be surprised!

rw

But then he might not be able to retire a millionaire! But he'd have sonic wealth beyond belief!

musicoverall
11-29-2005, 05:09 AM
Amazingly enough, you are correct. I tried this and found the wires actually made no sound at all, right up to the point where I pressed he "play" button on my CD player.

Clearly the skeptics were correct all along; wires make no sound. Maybe this explains the whole cable debate, those who can't hear the effect of different cables, forgot to press "play"?

I think it's more a need to turn off their "Bias" button and turn on their "listening" button.

Mash
02-13-2006, 06:46 PM
Mr. E-Stat, Mr. Futterman once told me that the original Futterman OTL design was NEVER intended to be used with speakers of less than an 8-ohm impedance. Back in the old days you either used 8-ohm impedance Tympani or you converted 4-ohm impedance Tympani to 16-ohm impedance Tympani. All contemporary Magnepan speakers including the 20.1 are 4-ohm impedance, so perhaps the Joule Electra OTL amps are a Futterman-OTL type of amplifier redesigned to permit use with 4-ohm impedance speakers. But I am mystified as to WHY you feel that I should be interested in 20.1s driven by Joule Electra OTL amps using Valhalla throughout given that my main system can already reproduce the piano just as I hear live pianos in recitals. Really, would your 20.1s driven by Joule Electra OTL amps using Valhalla throughout sound MORE real than do real pianos? You have lost me with your philosophical approach.

Rewiring a Magnepan to increased impedance is likely beyond the skill set of most audiophiles, or perhaps audio market realities simply require an amp that will work with 4-ohm speakers. I have rewired Tympani and I also have successfully fixed a tube amp. Have you ever fixed an ailing tube amp, Mr. E-Stat?

All this anguish about wires suggests that people posting here spend a lot of money on wires! Well, I probably spent less than they typically spend on their wires to update my bedroom sound system. I replaced the Musical Fidelity A2 with a new Jolida 302B and I added a 3-week-old C-J preamp to control everything and facilitate the optimum connection of a Velodyne Servo-15 sub. The bedroom system also has a video upscaler for DVD’s and another video upscaler for VCR tapes. Now those Magnepans really sing, and “The Phantom of the Opera” sounds as great as it looks on the HDTV. I am sure this is a far greater “bang for the bucks” than those fancy wires could ever offer.

I must leave you gentlemen to debate the "sound" of one wire versus the "sound" of another wire while you will probably also argue against attending piano recitals. Piano recitals are where you might learn how a REAL piano actually sounds, but I am sure you will argue that there will be different pianos at different recitals (well, DUH!), different piano players at different recitals (well, DOUBLE DUH!), different venue acoustics, ad nauseam. I suspect that “wire listeners” as a group could not trouble-shoot a tube amp without electrocuting themselves, and that “wire listeners” most likely could not even rewire a 4-ohm Tympani speaker to be a 16 ohm Tympani speaker! The posted “little jokes and jibes” read as though they come from rather young people who are still living with mom and dad and do not yet sense the need to be prudent with money.

E-Stat
02-14-2006, 06:30 AM
Mr. E-Stat, Mr. Futterman once told me that the original Futterman OTL design was NEVER intended to be used with speakers of less than an 8-ohm impedance.
Ok.


...so perhaps the Joule Electra OTL amps are a Futterman-OTL type of amplifier redesigned to permit use with 4-ohm impedance speakers.
While they are OTL, Jud Barber uses the Russian 6C33 outputs which were unknown to the Western world at the time. I met him and his charming wife over dinner in Atlanta with John Cooledge and Harry Pearson. Jud is quite aware of HP's use of the evaluation pair of Rite of Passages with 20.1s (and also with the Nola Grand Reference) and John's use of his Joule Electra amps with his sub 8 ohm Avalons.

Joule Electra (http://www.joule-electra.com/pr_vz160.htm)


But I am mystified as to WHY you feel that I should be interested in 20.1s driven by Joule Electra OTL amps using Valhalla throughout given that my main system can already reproduce the piano just as I hear live pianos in recitals.
As good as the T-1Us, T-1Cs, T-1Ds, and T-IIIs were that I've heard, none of them were as faithful to the live event IMHO as the 20.1. Don't get me wrong - I fell in love with Magneplanars when I first heard T-1Us back in '74. The memory is so clear, I can tell you exactly what was playing. While not one of my favorites, "Kodachrome" by Paul Simon sounded completely unlike I had ever heard a box speaker sound. I have been a planar enthusiast ever since. A year later, I bought a pair of MG-IIs before later moving on to full range electrostats. (It was JWC's Dayton-Wrights that first swayed me). Take the timbral accuracy and realistic soundstage size of Maggies and couple that with the utter coherency of a single driver. Back to Maggies, I truly believe that Jim Winey has not simply rested on his laurels over the past three decades. One of these days I'd really like to take HP up on his offer to get me a tour through their plant as I have business in the Minneapolis area on a regular basis.


Really, would your 20.1s driven by Joule Electra OTL amps using Valhalla throughout sound MORE real than do real pianos?
The 20.1s I heard were at Seacliff and not mine. They were, however, my second choice in a recent speaker replacement behind the Sound Lab U-1s. Evidently, we have different points of reference as to what constitutes the sound of a live piano. I am quite familiar with the sound of my wife playing her baby grand in the living room.


Rewiring a Magnepan to increased impedance is likely beyond the skill set of most audiophiles, or perhaps audio market realities simply require an amp that will work with 4-ohm speakers.
For that reason, there are Magneplanar / OTL enthusiasts who use the Zero Autoformer to improve the impedance match. Usually, I see those used with Atmasphere amps.


Have you ever fixed an ailing tube amp, Mr. E-Stat?
Well, I fixed an old The Fisher mono amp that ate a bias resistor about thirty years ago. Wish I had never sold those. Around '78, I updated some components on my Acoustat X direct drive tube amps. Fortunately since then I have not had trouble with either my Audio Research nor VTL amps.


I am sure this is a far greater “bang for the bucks” than those fancy wires could ever offer.
Sounds like a nice system. Indeed, the law of diminishing returns is found with many pursuits. Having said that, even the Double New Advents in my vintage system have benefitted from cable upgrades. Not Valhallas though :^)


I must leave you gentlemen to debate the "sound" of one wire versus the "sound" of another wire while you will probably also argue against attending piano recitals.
You must be talking about someone else! Who doesn't love hearing the Vince Guaraldi Peanuts music? I thoroughly enjoy hearing solo piano ranging from New Age artists like Liz Story (my wife and I used "Wedding Rain" in ours 20 years ago) and George Winston (I have his tribute album to Guaraldi) to many classical composers. I'm rather partial to Prokofiev Concertos - either by Askenazy or Beroff. If you seek true reproduction of the live event, whatever that may be, it has been my experience that the best cables offer a degree of clarity and focus not found otherwise.


I suspect that “wire listeners” as a group could not trouble-shoot a tube amp without electrocuting themselves, and that “wire listeners” most likely could not even rewire a 4-ohm Tympani speaker to be a 16 ohm Tympani speaker!
I'm not sure a get the connection between the ability to perform electronic repair and the ability to perceive musical reproduction. Likewise, do you think that Michael Schumacher could repair the engine in his F1 Ferrari 248?

rw

Geoffcin
02-14-2006, 07:58 AM
I'm not sure a get the connection between the ability to perform electronic repair and the ability to perceive musical reproduction. Likewise, do you think that Michael Schumacher could repair the engine in his F1 Ferrari 248?

rw
He's of the opinion that the final solution to audio resides in his house, and no futher upgrade is possible. No amount of logic could sway him otherwise. Most of the posts of his that I've read are also quite patronizing. Perhaps he should change his screen name to
"sour mash" ;o)

E-Stat
02-14-2006, 08:40 AM
I will nevertheless point out fallacies with the stereotype if not for him, others.


He's of the opinion that the final solution to audio resides in his house, and no futher upgrade is possible.
I find it interesting to contrast the opinions of otherwise similar minded posters in the perception of how close we are to achieving the "live experience". I gather by his post, that his system has already achieved that. Skeptic/Soundmind, however, is of a different opinion completely.

"...and the conductor adjusts his tempo to tune his performance to the hall, you will NEVER get anything like that sound out of two boxes or panels in your living room. Reproducing that sound is far beyond the current state of the art. Anyone who disagrees obviously hasn't heard it and what is lost with even the best recordings and equipment we have, are qualities indespensible for the full enjoyment and understanding of this music."

I find the answer between the two extremes.

rw

musicoverall
02-14-2006, 10:16 AM
I will nevertheless point out fallacies with the stereotype if not for him, others.


I find it interesting to contrast the opinions of otherwise similar minded posters in the perception of how close we are to achieving the "live experience". I gather by his post, that his system has already achieved that. Skeptic/Soundmind, however, is of a different opinion completely.

"...and the conductor adjusts his tempo to tune his performance to the hall, you will NEVER get anything like that sound out of two boxes or panels in your living room. Reproducing that sound is far beyond the current state of the art. Anyone who disagrees obviously hasn't heard it and what is lost with even the best recordings and equipment we have, are qualities indespensible for the full enjoyment and understanding of this music."

I find the answer between the two extremes.

rw

Still, you are to be commended for being the bastion of seemingly infinite patience that you are. I read Mash's post and wondered if he'd recently found a 100-lb bag of illogical reasoning on sale at his local supermarket! Yikes!

The sound of live music... well, as much as my system has improved in that regard over the last several years, I still have a long way to go. However, there are times when I'd swear I had been transported to the venue and those times are hair-raising indeed. Even so, I'd pass a DBT between live piano and anyone's audio system with flying colors.

hermanv
02-14-2006, 11:29 AM
Most recordings will never sound like live music. They are recordered with as many microphones (or more) are there are musicians, the instrumens are recorded close miked (have you listened to a saxaphone with your ear inside the bell?) and then mixed, blended and panned into position on the final cut. Even ambience mikes are mixed into the end result to give dimension to the music but it's not real.

This isn't necessarily bad, but it isn't live music either. The comparison is not really germaine.

I have listened to a great number of cables, on some it is easy to identify a given signature, they have a sound or coloration. Others are just plain better but it is very difficult to express what exacty it is that is better about them. The whole process of listening to an artist or a system is largely a subjective one.

For me, fine cables help the experience, I encourange others to test cables in their system to see if they will help. If a given cable doesn't help their system, that is not evidence that it doesn't help mine.

Many audiophiles recognize that carefully designed equipment using exotic components sounds better than the mass market equipment, we pay dearly for the difference. After all the difference beteween the exotic, expensive, name brand, audiophile amplifier and that mass market substitute is mostly details and materials quality. Why is it that hard to believe that details and materials quality in a cable can affect the sound quality?

A Chinese mass market resistor (about $0.003 in volume, made with some deposited carbon on a ceramic substrate) and a Vishay S102 ($11.95 for one, made with ultra pure aluminum foil on a glass substrate) measure the same on my Ohmmeter. My ears disagree with my Ohmmeter, they say that they are not the same, when used in an electronic circuit, the Vishay sounds better.

musicoverall
02-15-2006, 04:48 AM
If a given cable doesn't help their system, that is not evidence that it doesn't help mine.
.

And vice versa. There are some folks who read reviews and assume that the magic cable someone is writing about will automatically transform their own systems. That may work on rare occasions but there is no substitute for a personal audition. I, too, encourage people to give cables a try once they've taken care of business in other areas of their system such as electronics, speakers, room acoustics, etc.

Critofur
03-15-2006, 10:13 PM
After all these arguments, almost inevitably, the most significantly flawed component of almost all systems will be the speakers. There are no speakers in the world that can come close, not even within an order of magnitude I would guess, to the accuracy that even a moderately cheap amp and 16 gauge lamp cord can.

So if your speakers are contributing 1% - 5% (or more) innacuracy then what is the point of changing an amp / cable which is only adding .01% - .05% innacuracy to the mix?

Of course, we do want our amp to have sufficient power and dynamic range to avoid frequent clipping and to stay and low THD levels but beyond that, the returns are diminishing.

Many years ago I had cheap bookshelf 2-way speakers and a cheap Dyna tube amp. I really enjoyed listening to music on that system, far more than I do today on much more expensive systems. I wish I could have that experience again.

accastil
03-16-2006, 01:34 AM
very nicely said.

accastil
03-16-2006, 01:34 AM
Most recordings will never sound like live music. They are recordered with as many microphones (or more) are there are musicians, the instrumens are recorded close miked (have you listened to a saxaphone with your ear inside the bell?) and then mixed, blended and panned into position on the final cut. Even ambience mikes are mixed into the end result to give dimension to the music but it's not real.

This isn't necessarily bad, but it isn't live music either. The comparison is not really germaine.

I have listened to a great number of cables, on some it is easy to identify a given signature, they have a sound or coloration. Others are just plain better but it is very difficult to express what exacty it is that is better about them. The whole process of listening to an artist or a system is largely a subjective one.

For me, fine cables help the experience, I encourange others to test cables in their system to see if they will help. If a given cable doesn't help their system, that is not evidence that it doesn't help mine.

Many audiophiles recognize that carefully designed equipment using exotic components sounds better than the mass market equipment, we pay dearly for the difference. After all the difference beteween the exotic, expensive, name brand, audiophile amplifier and that mass market substitute is mostly details and materials quality. Why is it that hard to believe that details and materials quality in a cable can affect the sound quality?

A Chinese mass market resistor (about $0.003 in volume, made with some deposited carbon on a ceramic substrate) and a Vishay S102 ($11.95 for one, made with ultra pure aluminum foil on a glass substrate) measure the same on my Ohmmeter. My ears disagree with my Ohmmeter, they say that they are not the same, when used in an electronic circuit, the Vishay sounds better.

very nicely said

musicoverall
03-16-2006, 09:14 AM
After all these arguments, almost inevitably, the most significantly flawed component of almost all systems will be the speakers. There are no speakers in the world that can come close, not even within an order of magnitude I would guess, to the accuracy that even a moderately cheap amp and 16 gauge lamp cord can.

So if your speakers are contributing 1% - 5% (or more) innacuracy then what is the point of changing an amp / cable which is only adding .01% - .05% innacuracy to the mix?

Of course, we do want our amp to have sufficient power and dynamic range to avoid frequent clipping and to stay and low THD levels but beyond that, the returns are diminishing.

Many years ago I had cheap bookshelf 2-way speakers and a cheap Dyna tube amp. I really enjoyed listening to music on that system, far more than I do today on much more expensive systems. I wish I could have that experience again.

I'd rather not use the term "innaccuracies" and neither will I attempt to assign a percentage to various components as to their influence on the sound. But to answer your question, why would you spend $10,000 more on speakers when you can get the sound you're looking for with a $1000 cable upgrade?

I auditioned several speakers before deciding on the ones I purchased. An appreciable step up would have been very, very expensive. At any rate, the speakers I purchased exhibited the type of sound I wanted and was extremely close to the mental sonic image I have of music. The cables were the tweak that brought it all together. Cables are what one would upgrade when he's taken care of everything else. The amps I already had when I bought the speakers work fine but if I decide to upgrade, I'll spend less than if I attempt to upgrade the speakers.

The bottom line is that while I have a rudimentary understanding of measurements, I do review them but the final analysis is done by listening. Excellent specs aren't very meaningful if the result is less than desirable sound.

buffle
03-25-2006, 11:48 PM
Most recordings will never sound like live music. They are recordered with as many microphones (or more) are there are musicians, the instrumens are recorded close miked (have you listened to a saxaphone with your ear inside the bell?) and then mixed, blended and panned into position on the final cut. Even ambience mikes are mixed into the end result to give dimension to the music but it's not real.

This isn't necessarily bad, but it isn't live music either. The comparison is not really germaine.

I have listened to a great number of cables, on some it is easy to identify a given signature, they have a sound or coloration. Others are just plain better but it is very difficult to express what exacty it is that is better about them. The whole process of listening to an artist or a system is largely a subjective one.

For me, fine cables help the experience, I encourange others to test cables in their system to see if they will help. If a given cable doesn't help their system, that is not evidence that it doesn't help mine.

Many audiophiles recognize that carefully designed equipment using exotic components sounds better than the mass market equipment, we pay dearly for the difference. After all the difference beteween the exotic, expensive, name brand, audiophile amplifier and that mass market substitute is mostly details and materials quality. Why is it that hard to believe that details and materials quality in a cable can affect the sound quality?

A Chinese mass market resistor (about $0.003 in volume, made with some deposited carbon on a ceramic substrate) and a Vishay S102 ($11.95 for one, made with ultra pure aluminum foil on a glass substrate) measure the same on my Ohmmeter. My ears disagree with my Ohmmeter, they say that they are not the same, when used in an electronic circuit, the Vishay sounds better.


If there is a difference, and you cannot measure it, then you are using the wrong instrument to test it.

In the case of the resistors, an ohmmeter can only tell you part of the story. Resistors are often constructed in a circular wound pattern. This forms an inductor of low value. This inductance must be taken into account. Another factor is the current capacity of the resistor (power rating). If it gets hot then the ohmage may change with temperature. Another test to try might be to try passing varying audio frequencies through the resistor at the level they will be working with and compare input signal to output signal (distortion) on an accurate oscilloscope. If all these factors were comparable, then there would be absolutely no way that there could be a discernable difference. (for those that disagree, could I sell you some sound improving crystals or a prayer book - you will here an important improvent in the 'humidity' of the sound. (just jokes)).

I'll say it again, if there is a genuine difference, and you are not able to measure it, you are simply using the wrong test instrument.

FLZapped
06-07-2008, 05:17 AM
Wow, boy, sure hard to argue with that. One can only hope you joined the school debating team. With such stunning repartee, with such carefully constructed and considered logic you must have been devastating to the opposition.

Assertions need to be proven, several were made, they need to be verified. No discussion is needed.



I've heard it said that ignorance is bliss; in that case one might fear you're getting too close to comatose (that might explain the yawn).

A a page out of Jon Risch. No evidence, therfore, resort to ad hominem attacks.



So what do you think? Tens of thousands of people have bought expensive cables and all of them are fools?

Only the one's who bought them believing they would make an audible difference over less expensive like cables.




Every time someone does in fact prove that cables have a sound of their own,

Please post said proof.



The mathmatical proof for the 4 color map theory took 600 years to be developed, but anyone could easily prove by experimentation that 4 colors always worked.

And electrical throey didn't get proven out over nght either.....big deal.



Anyone with a decent system can easily hear differences in 2 cables; one generic copper, Radio Shack style and the other, one of the sneered at high price models. The really amazing thing is that the difference will be there, whether you can explain it or not.

Just listen, it's not that hard.

Post said proof.

-Bruce

FLZapped
06-07-2008, 05:27 AM
Not to mention trolling.


Oh please, you can be more creative than that.



My advice to newbies is to listen for themselves. If that's a claim, I'm guilty.


Claim, no. So no argument there.



And of course my final point was that I couldn't possibly be expected to solve your dilemma of skepticism.

If you believe you heard a difference, that's one thing, but to say there was a difference, is quite another. Perhaps what you need is a change in the approach to you wording.

-Bruce

audio amateur
06-07-2008, 10:00 AM
You do realise the last post on this thread was written 2 years ago?

musicoverall
06-17-2008, 07:36 AM
You do realise the last post on this thread was written 2 years ago?

Apparently, even though I don't spend much time here anymore, my posts live on in infamy! :)

musicoverall
06-17-2008, 07:42 AM
If you believe you heard a difference, that's one thing, but to say there was a difference, is quite another. Perhaps what you need is a change in the approach to you wording.

-Bruce

I tested and heard a difference. If there are no differences and the test showed there were, what does that say about the test (single blind)?

I can't possibly say that something either "is" or " is not". I hear differences sometimes between components. Others do as well. Let's take the Nordost Valhalla speaker cable. Either they exhibit different sonic characteristics that are audible OR there are hundreds of people sharing an identical delusion. I would guess that whereas you and I find one of those situations unthinkable, it's probably the opposite. :)