hermanv - regarding: "Speaker cable blind listening tests"

[Feanor]

...
One other thing...

Double blind tests are not valid for several reasons. First, everyone that claims to hear differences in wire do so on their home system at their leisure. They are familiar with the sound of their system, are not under pressure to perform, and there are no time limits. DBT's are normally done on someone elses system, with someone elses wire, and there is pressure to get it right.

So, how could we improve on the DBT? Simple! Take two wires that someone already has experiance with and claims that they do sound different and disguise them to look identical, except for color. Give them to that person and let them decide which is which in their home system at their own leisure. This would eliminate all the variables that a normal DBT imparts on the test.

I personally believe that DBTs, as designed and conducted, are often flawed. For example, in my opinion, a short coming of many DBTs is that participants are not permitted the chance to familiarize themselves to their own satisfaction with the different sources in sighted listening before the test is beguns; another flaw would be that they cannot control how long they get to listen to each sound, and/or when the switch to the other (or possibly the same) sound is made. Regardless however, the only valid outcome for even the most rigorous test is, "The test revealed that the test subjects, under the test conditions, could/could not reliably distinguish between the sounds". Of course, remember that not all DBTs ever conducted have turned up negative results.

But to generalize regarding negative results, I ask, if you cannot distinguish different sounds under reasonable DBT conditions, how important can those differences really be???

[Mash]

Anytime someone advocates an action involving you spending your money, your first question should be: Are they in a position to gain financially, directly or indirectly, from my purchase decision?

It is exceedingly funny to me when people will more readily believe someone with either a direct financial stake in a purchase decision (a dealer) or an indirect stake in the purchase decision (a moderator here who wishes to protect the advertisers) than they will believe someone who has NO financial stake in their decision.

Do you spend $1300 on wires, or do you spend $1300 on a Jolida 302B plus a pair of Magnepan MMG? This is a simple question for me to answer.

If you try some exotic wires and you cannot hear any difference, why your system is simply not resolving enough! It CANNOT be that those wires made no difference, no sir! So the dealer can help you build a 'more resolving' system.... for $$$, of course!

You STILL cannot hear any difference with those new wires? Obviously, your system is STILL simply not resolving enough! The dealer can help you build an 'even more resolving' system.... for $$$$, of course!

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our wires, But in our systems, that we are poor.

Now if you (think you) DO hear a difference using those exotic wires, OH, JOY! You are then an anointed and holy audiophile with a wonderful sound-system, and you are a leader of audiophiles and men, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. By the way, we just happen to have some OTHER exotic wires for you to try that are even better than the ones you just bought but of course they cost a little more. Trade in your old wires? Well, the used-wire market is a little soft right now, and True Audiophiles would be concerned that you might not have broken your wires in correctly, and.... yadda yadda yadda.....

I posted an open letter to Skeptic on "SPEAKERS" suggesting he consider the Mackie HR824's connected with XLR cables. And what did I see at the bottom of that thread? Hotlinks to dealers selling XLR cables and Mackie HR824 speakers, but not at the best prices....

Deep Throat was right: Follow the Money

[musicoverall]

Do you spend $1300 on wires, or do you spend $1300 on a Jolida 302B plus a pair of Magnepan MMG? This is a simple question for me to answer.

If you try some exotic wires and you cannot hear any difference, why your system is simply not resolving enough! It CANNOT be that those wires made no difference, no sir! So the dealer can help you build a 'more resolving' system.... for $$$, of course!

Simple question, but it depends on if one already owns a good amp and speakers or not. Purchasing a Jolida 302B and Maggie MMG's would be a step backward for many people while spending $1300 to upgrade their cables might be a step forward.

A system that isn't resolving enough *might* be the problem if one cannot hear differences in wire. It could also be that their listening skills are lacking. And in many cases, the wires simply do not sound different in that application (system). I've found that to be the case many times.

Your advice about being careful around those with a financial stake in your purchase decision is good advice. But it's not enough. One must be careful when listening to someone with ANY kind of agenda. If it's to sell cables, or promote a website or to protect one's scientific credentials, it only goes to show that people should try for themselves those products about which they are curious.

So on the issue of cables, a prospective experimenter should ask himself some questions. Does the person recommending them (or vehemently NOT recommending them) have an agenda. Is he going to gain financially? Or is he perhaps afraid that someone might discover that the truth is different from what they believe? How badly does the recommender want or not want cables to affect the sound? Are they posting about their own experiences or lack of same?

An open mind is a terrible thing to waste.

[hermanv]

Hi StevenSurprenant, I hadn't checked this catagory for a long time, thanks for the kind words. I'm afraid the whole cable war thing will drag on nearly forever. As an EE I have every reason to doubt the technical aspects of cable differences, as an audiophile I can not ignore what my ears tell me.

Take a cheap boom box, place it in different locations within a room, the sound quality changes. Now step up to a better system, to get the most out of that system, speaker placement becomes far more critical.

As the listener climbs up the sound quality curve, he soon learns that room treatments matter. It can be as simple as closing the drapes or as exotic as buying specialty products (corner traps, bass traps, absorbers, diffusers etc.). Many of these products can be home made or purchased at often exotic prices.

IMHO the whole price thing has little to do with ego or status, it's that the better audio products on the whole are more expensive.

As the determined listener continues to improve his system, two things tend to happen; 1. He gets better at hearing small changes and 2. as the system quality improves, ever smaller effects become discernable.

What I'm saying is that the differences between cables will not be heard with a boom box in a cement bunker, but as other components including the room improve, at some point cables will begin to make an audible difference.

It is unfortunate that the magazines on the whole resort to hyperbole when describing cable differences, "Wow, I never heard such a gigantic change". This isn't really true, but when all other attempts to improve the sound quality have reached a practical limit, it may seem like the cable change is huge. This is mainly due to the fact that all the other changes have stopped offering any useful additional improvement.

Some cables offer immediate and obvious differences, smear or muddling as opposed to hard or harsh seem common. Other cables have far more subtle effects, some take days of listening to many sources and kinds of music to reveal themselves. All this is made worse by another controversial subject called break in.

Double blind testing can be made valid. The problem is that in spite of wha the magazines say, most cable differences take some time to identify. This makes a usefull DBT so lengthy that many can't or won't bother. It is also my opinion that DBT tests can not be done by commitee, more than two listeners would make it nearly impossible to agree on what to listen to and for how long.

For me, hearing the difference between a good Kimber interconnect and a good Cardas interconnect is pretty tough, but hearing the differnece between either of these and a cheap Radio Shack interconnect is fairly easy.

The CD became popular because it sounded better than that old $99 record changer with ceramic cartridge we all used to have. Yet todays $25,000 vinyl playback systems sound better than a CD, all this proves is that good sound reproduction is a collection of subtleties.

[FLZapped]

I personally believe that DBTs, as designed and conducted, are often flawed. For example, in my opinion, a short coming of many DBTs is that participants are not permitted the chance to familiarize themselves to their own satisfaction with the different sources in sighted listening before the test is beguns; another flaw would be that they cannot control how long they get to listen to each sound, and/or when the switch to the other (or possibly the same) sound is made. Regardless however, the only valid outcome for even the most rigorous test is, "The test revealed that the test subjects, under the test conditions, could/could not reliably distinguish between the sounds". Of course, remember that not all DBTs ever conducted have turned up negative results.

But to generalize regarding negative results, I ask, if you cannot distinguish different sounds under reasonable DBT conditions, how important can those differences really be???

Your reasoning is flawed. I can use pink noise as a test signal - how do you familiarize yourself with that?

Familiarization has nothing to do with finding differences, especially under switched conditions. The difference will be obvious at the switch, or it won't.

Further, DBTs don't give "negative results" - you either get a null - no difference could be detected, or that there was a difference detected, period.

If you want a different result, you'd have to switch to something along the lines of a Mean Objective Score type test.

-Bruce