hermanv - regarding: "Speaker cable blind listening tests"

[Mash]

And the members of each and every religion know, they absolutely know, that they and only they have true enlightenment. All non-members are heretics who will burn in Hell. How can this be?

The Islamists call the Americans in Iraq "Crusaders". Are the Islamists correct?

I point out the silliness of an audiophile viewpoint and someone will always claim "I heard it". Well, people have heard many things over the years, or at least they claimed they did. Son of Sam listened to his dog tell him to kill people. Should we believe, or not believe, Son of Sam?

The follow-on comment is usually, as here, "I've never looked back, believe what you want, I could care less. Just allow other's to try for themselves."

Well, tell me HOW to NOT "allow others to try for themselves"? This continues to remain, for me, a curious request.

It isn't my time or my money that you are spending fiddling with wires.... is it? But I sure as hell am not going to encourage someone else to waste their time or money. Encouraging other people, by whatever pursuasion, to waste their time or money is when the "problem" always occurs for me.

A fool & his money are soon parted. But you usually won't know you have been fooled until after your money is long gone! And you will never get it back.

I think I had it right before:

If your system is a close match to real live sound, using fancy or plain speaker wires won't make any difference.

If your system is NOT AT ALL a close match to real live sound, using fancy or plain speaker wires won't make your system BECOME a close match to real live sound.

Soooooo.......... why bother? You know, this "hobby" USED to be called HiFi or High Fidelity, as in "High Fidelity to the Original". Not "Let's listen to a bunch of wires, or amplifiers, or whatever, and pick what we like best".

We use tape measures when we build something. We use a reliable map or GPS when we want to drive to an unfamiliar location. We don't use ad-hoc comparisons.

If you do not have a firm and reliable reference, then you will never know where you are.

[hermanv]

Are the Islamists correct?

And you accuse me of a certain defensive desperation?

Well, tell me HOW to NOT "allow others to try for themselves"? This continues to remain, for me, a curious request.

You do it by posting exactly how you have.

I say "I hear", I say "other's hear", I say "try it". You say "You are a fool to fall for this stuff", don't bother because I've made up your mind for you. That's how to spread disinformation. Accuse people of an intellectual failure if they don't agree with you. Make them afraid to try, for fear that they would be accused of being a fool.

"Audio memory, like visual memory, is very long when it has been developed by listening to live acoustic music. Electric instruments, like stereo equipment and loudspeakers, do not seem to offer much long-term audio memory development."

I let this go earlier, where did you find this gem? Since it was in quotes perhaps you could share the source?

Most audiophiles like music, they do go to live events. The one thing you will rarely find on this forum is equipment prices or costs. If that were the driving force, a game of one upsmanship would soon develop.

Many audio "tweaks" have not survived the market test of time, they were in fact debunked as "snake oil". On the other hand, cable companies are thriving. There are probably a hundred of them, many have survived years of selling their product. Since each needs to sell many cables to pay their bills, thousands or tens of thousands must have been sold by now. All those fools, who would have thought?

[StevenSurprenant]

I'll add my two cents here too...

hermanv said his system is very clear. How do you measure that?

A average system causes some instruments to sound congealed in the soundstage while a good system separates them so they sound distinct from one another. How do you measure that?

Many systems have very little or no depth to the soundstage while some good ones sound like the soundstage goes back to infinity. How do you measure that?

Some speakers make the sound come from the speaker plane or behind while others seem to extend out into the room to envelope the listener. How do you measure that?

Some speakers sound smooth while others sound hard. How do you measure that?

If you listen mostly to di-pole speakers, most box speakers sound boxy irregardless of price. People who don't have dipoles don't hear the boxiness. How can you prove to them that you hear it?

You can listen to speakers/amps that measure the same, but sound totally different. How do you put that into numbers?

I just bought a Trends T-amp and the improvement in clarity and separation was astounding. I never expected that from the measurements. I had to go on anecdotal information to make a decision to buy.

I spent years trying to explain soundstage to my friend and he never understood until he heard it for himself. Now it's one of the most important criteria in his life regarding audio.

The point is that there are many things in audio that cannot be measured. At least not yet. That doesn't mean that they don't exist.

[Feanor]

...

I spent years trying to explain soundstage to my friend and he never understood until he heard it for himself. Now it's one of the most important criteria in his life regarding audio.

The point is that there are many things in audio that cannot be measured. At least not yet. That doesn't mean that they don't exist.

There are things you hear that cannot be measured by any means we know know of. And I too am finally a subjectivist. But, and it's a big 'but', I'm skeptical subjectivist.

You hear "trust your ears" all the time (from subjectivists). Well I don't altogether trust my own ears. I'm not altogether confident that my perception isn't biased by expectation. I try to compensate for this by a combination of short, (as short as a few seconds), and long term listening, (hours of continuous listening over several days), before I come to any final conclusion.

Incidentally, 2/3 of the time my the first impression based on 10-15 minutes of listening is confirmed over the long term, but I never trust such first impressions. On the other hand if I'm not aware of any difference after listening causually for a few hours over a couple of days, I'm willing to conclude there is no difference of any significance. In the past when I've noticed no difference in causal listening, I have resorted to intense A/B comparisions and come to the conclusion that, yes, perhaps there is a tiny difference, a little bit less grain or whatever. Nowadays I deem this a complete waste of time (and potentially money).

Of course, it is almost completely useless to judge a component under anything but all-else-equal circumstances. And that means, for example, that you can't judge between speakers only in heard in different dealers' showrooms. Nor can you conclusively judge without listening to both components in the same system. And preferably at the same time: my own impressions are certainly affected by mode and my tiredness, etc.