Why is there so much hostility on this board lately?

[skeptic]

Why do people feel the need to post here and make the claims for cables in the first place? They could just as easily keep THEIR opinions to themselves as well. People like to post on BBs. Besides, what's obvious to me is not necessarily obvious to someone else. Especially a newbie who gets bombarded by endless ad copy, sales pitches in retails stores, and some more of the same on some internets sites. So it's nice to have a balance of opinions. At this site for the moment, the balance may be in favor of those who don't believe that these cables are of any value. At other times, the preponderance of opinions was in the other direction or at least that's how it seemed to me. I don't consider this one of life's major issues. And I usually don't insult people unless they insult me first. But if they do, they may get it back in spades.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

Terrence the Terrible sez:
"I am totally amazed when I come here to read some of the really passionate, inflammatory, and often very bated language coming from posters here(Mtry does have a way of bringing that out of you) However, I agree with Dr. Toole on this one, there is FAR more going on in your room than through those wires. It seem pretty silly to me to see people ingaging so vehemently over a subject that would account for about 1-2 percent of the total sum of things. When I went to college we called that majoring in minors."

RG:
The point in arguing about wires, and baiting the "WireNuts", is that whether you're right or wrong would make little difference to the overall sound quality. The whole point is to argue bitterly about the least important link in the audio system (according to us WirePolice, although most WireNuts claim differences among wires are so H*U*G*E even their wives could hear the difference while still in their cars coming up the driveway) and completely ignore the most important variable -- the listening room --- because fixing a room requires knowledge, measurements and tools whose application is not that simple
for those without experience ... and even after everything is just right the wife will see the acoustics treatments and go berserk threatening divorce if they are not removed and taken to the village garbage dump immediately. Wires are easy -- you just read some review, believe it, buy them, and then post on the internet how G*R*E*A*T they are "Why now, with my new Unobtanium Deluxe Ultra Ultra Diamond Ruby Cables, Barry Manilow sounds E*X*A*C*T*L*Y like Frank Sinatra on my rig ! ... EXACTLY ! ... Just ask my wife"

R. BassNut Greene
Funding for this post provided by The WirePolice Foundation, curing WireNuts,
one not at a time.

Doc,

Just as sure as I am a brown skin, green eyed, bald headed, muscled jock rican from New York city, these guys are going to skip over these comments and continue to bicker amoungst themselves about a piece of wire. I am begining to believe this is more about who's piss contains more testosterone than it is about wire itself.

Were can I donate to the Wirepolice foundation? I would like to give them my whole paycheck. They got alotta work to do.

[markw]

All it takes is a little prick to destroy it.

[E-Stat]

You've really gone to some of the key nuances that drive the fierceness of the debate. Mtry has never actuall said what you quoted.

In response to an earlier observation concerning the utter lack of any compelling test, here was his response:

Null Hypothesis

"Hey, I don't have to have a single citation. You still have the burden of demonstration for differences. Rather simple science. "

So, he is saying, "I don't have to prove my assumption. You still have the burden of proving my assumption wrong. "

Indeed simple science for simpletons.


rw

[E-Stat]

Why do people feel the need to post here and make the claims for cables in the first place? They could just as easily keep THEIR opinions to themselves as well.

In case you haven't noticed, many posters ask for advice. Here are some recent examples, in all of which you decided to post:

bi-wiring

Is a heavy guage power cord helpful?

DH Labs Silver T-14 speaker cables............

AC Power Cable suggestions please

What is your reason?

rw

[skeptic]

I look for every opportunity to correct your mistakes. I have great hopes that you will someday learn something from your exchanges here just as PCTower did. His views are very different now than they were when he first started posting on this BB and I expect you too will gain from reading opinions that don't agree with your preconceived notions too. I consider it missionary work. I'm sure others like Woodman, Mtrycraft, Monstrous Mike, Bruce and other with experience and advanced knowledge do too. I'm merely giving back to society in gratitude for having had the opportunity to learn so much.

While you may find this hard to understand, so did PCTower at first and for a long time. But with persistance, he has gained a lot and I think you eventually will too.

[E-Stat]

I'm merely giving back to society in gratitude for having had the opportunity to learn so much.

We share that in common. May you share the good fortune of hearing some of the systems I've heard one day, despite your particular set of preconceived notions.


rw

[pctower]

I look for every opportunity to correct your mistakes. I have great hopes that you will someday learn something from your exchanges here just as PCTower did. His views are very different now than they were when he first started posting on this BB and I expect you too will gain from reading opinions that don't agree with your preconceived notions too. I consider it missionary work. I'm sure others like Woodman, Mtrycraft, Monstrous Mike, Bruce and other with experience and advanced knowledge do too. I'm merely giving back to society in gratitude for having had the opportunity to learn so much.

While you may find this hard to understand, so did PCTower at first and for a long time. But with persistance, he has gained a lot and I think you eventually will too.

Beleive it or not, I think I've probably learned more from you than just about anyone. You are very good at taking the time to explain technical issues in terms that lay people can understand.

[mtrycraft]

It is the feeling by some that science has fully quantifiied absolutely every single aspect of the musical experience. Any differences between various audio components is simply due to easily corrected frequency differences. Redbook CD really is perfect and the higher resolution standards are there simply for marketing purposes. There have been no real improvements in the reproduction chain for over twenty years, so now companies are just playing musical preferences.
rw

What absolute nonsense.

[mtrycraft]

Funding for this post provided by The WirePolice Foundation, curing WireNuts,
one not at a time.

Did my annual donation arrive in time?

[DMK]

[
Well, Skeptic says that AR used to do that thirty and forty years ago. Why don't they or anyone else on the planet do so today? Skeptic then blames it on audiophiles. He says that now that audiophiles "failed to embrace" AR, that company has fallen from grace and no longer produces state-of-the-art gear. And since they were the ONLY ones EVER to design their equipment around accurate musical results, then the audio world has never been the same. rw

I wish I could find his posts where he writes that his system is 0% of the way to accurately reproducing live music in his home. The people that tested those AR's and couldn't tell them from live music years ago must have been deaf! In fact, I've discouraged people from buying used AR-9's because of Skeptic's obvious disappointment in them. He must have been taken in by the hype. My system may only fool me into believing I'm hearing live music 15% of the time but that's a lot more than 0%! I've suggested that he buy better speakers, some tubed gear and more vinyl but that "accuracy" is 0% enjoyable for him so I've run out of suggestions.

[skeptic]

There you go twisting my words around DMK. You credit me with saying things I didn't say and distorting the things that I did. I bought those AR9s on an impulse after a crazy car accident where I hit a huge tire that disintegrated off a semi on an interstate and came flying at me. They were demos and I paid $500 for the pair. Hard to resist that kind of bargain especially when I was still kicking myself for passing up the MX110B for $75 from the authorized repair center when I had the opportunity. I actually did not like these speakers until I tweaked them myself.

What I said about Acoustic Research is that they were among the few companies that ever tried a live versus recorded demo in public and probably the only ones who ran them successfully. I presented you with a link to a discussion on another BB where people who participated in it discussed it in detail and even gave an account of the article they wrote for the Boston chaper of the Audio Engineering Society.

As for zero percent, I stick with what I said but since you have forgotten it, I'll remind you of the gist of it. When I was very young, I had the opportunity to hear all of the practice sessions and concerts of an amature orchestra called The Queens College Orchestral Society since many friends and a few relatives played in it. I was struck by the enormous difference between the sound of the instruments and the orchestra in the practice room in the basement and in the concert hall at dress rehearsals and in the concerts themselves. The difference was of course the acoustic which as Dr. Bose told us (if you don't believe one other word he ever wrote or said, you can take this one to the bank) the overwhelming majority of sound we hear at a live concert is due to acoustics of the hall. What I said is that the current state of the art of sound recording and reproduction is still so primitive that it doesn't even understand let alone know how to reproduce the effects of acoustics of a live concert. Therefore on a scale of zero to a hundred where zero represents virtually anyone with normal hearing being able to identify instantly that they are listening to a recording played by a machine in their home and not a live performance in a concert hall and one hundred being where even the most experienced concert goers would be fooled most of the time, the best our technology can produce today is the same as it was a hundred years ago just after recording technology was invented and that is a score of zero. I'll stick with that because I am convinced more than ever that it is true. That does not mean that the timbre of individual instruments cannot be duplicated by audio equipment under highly contrived circumstances when compared in the same venue as the live instruments.

[E-Stat]

I wish I could find his posts where he writes that his system is 0% of the way to accurately reproducing live music in his home. The people that tested those AR's and couldn't tell them from live music years ago must have been deaf!

The search engine here is lacking in that it leads you to the entire thread, not the post in question. Here's one where he corrected my understanding of one of his earlier comments:

So is there no middle ground between yea and naysayers?

Actually, the live testing was on the AR-3 and LST, not the newer AR-9 design. I was amused, however, at his comments that despite the flat on axis performance of the AR tweeter designs, he couldn't imagine using something other than his indirect firing variation. So the AR engineers were at once the brilliant designers of perfection for over two decades, yet hopelessly inept. Go figure.

rw

[DMK]

There you go twisting my words around DMK. You credit me with saying things I didn't say and distorting the things that I did. .

I was indeed pulling your chain! Sorry, but it WAS sorta fun! Since you mentioned taking Dr Bose' comment "to the bank", the next thing I'll probably say is that you're a huge fan of Bose!

Seriously though, are you saying that ALL the live music you hear is in a large concert hall? No string quartets in an intimate setting? No jazz in a small club? With those venues as a reference point, my system does pretty fair in fooling me into believing I'm hearing live music at times.

Also, you can't have it both ways. Are the AR's 0% convincing as they are in your system or are they convincing enough to fool a bunch of musicians many years ago? You made your case on one side but what happened to fool those other people? Ok, as E-Stat said, it's two different models of speakers but what gives?

[skeptic]

The AR engineers were at least aware that not only was on axis frequency response important but that the frequency response of the total radiated energy was also important, something most other manufacturers still haven't figured out yet. But Peter Snell said when I met him that the frequency response at the listener was the really important factor. This lead me to consider that they engineers at AR hadn't gone quite far enough and that it was improtant for the early reflections over time to all have a reasonably flat response. When taking polar radiating patterns into consideration, the shortcoming of the direct firing systems at high frequencies becomes obvious. That is why so many music lovers buy loudspeakers which in one way or another fire high frequencies indirectly as well as directly. They may not know why they sound better but they do know it. These examples include most electrostatics, bipolar and omnipolar designs like Mirage, top of the line speakers from Snell, Vandersteen, Revel, among many others with indirect firing tweeters and of course, JBL paragon. Speakers which fire directly but with both off axis and on axis tweeters are also numerous form AR-LST to Mcintosh towers, Infinity IRS to old large Bozak systems. Every one of the designers of those systems knew that he could not get the sound he wanted for his best offering from a single direct firing tweeter.

[skeptic]

I have written about the plusses and minuses of Bose 901 extensively. It is a speaker I am very familiar with in its best incarnation, the original version. Suffice it to say that I simply accept it as an alternative product to the more conventional designs which never reached its full potential and is almost universally unsatisfactory to audiophiles. However, it has another market which likes it and pays the high asking price for it. It has attributes which apparantly appeal to many people who are not audiophiles.

It was interesting to hear the live versus recorded demos. The first one I heard with an AR3 sitting next to a guitarist, the speaker sounded barely perceptably brighter than the guitar but was otherwise indistinguishable to me. I was sitting just about directly on axis. I cannot tell whether or not things would have been different had I been sitting off axis but I suppose it would have. The live recorded demo against a restored Seeburg Nickelodeon was even more convincing. In this case the speakers were on the floor as I recall next to the nickelodeon on either side. It should be noted that the radiating pattern of direct firing loudspeakers in not similar to most musical instruments. The human voice may be an exception because most sibilant and explosive parts of speech which contain high frequencies are probably directed mostly forward. This is why it is hard to distinguish words clearly when someone is talking while facing away from you.

When the venue is small, the chances of a convincing duplication of a sound in a home is much greater than when it is large because the acoustics are more similar. What I am saying is this. While it was possible to recreate the sound of the guitarist in the hotel suite with an echoless recording played back with a carefully adjusted sound system right next to the guitarist, the sound I heard coming from Andre Segovia's guitar when he gave his concert at Carnegie Hall in the sixties cannot be duplicated in a home by any technology we have today. Are acoustics important in the enjoyment of music? That's not just my opinion but the opinion of virtually every music director and conductor in the world. And it's also the opinion of the most respected acousticians in the world like Leo Baranek of BBN, America's largest acoustical consulting firm. Want to learn what it's really about? Click on this web site, scroll down to "listen to this program, real audio" and get it straight from the world's leading acoustics experts. It's one of several lectures on acoustics which explains why it is so important in the enjoyment of music.

[rb122]

. If there are no differences to be found under any situation, then show me a test where someone is comparing Nordost Valhalla to zip on a $100,000 system and you will then have something to say. rw

Therein lies, if not the problem, then the lack of a solution. If bias is a factor in comparing audio components, it works for AND against. A diehard naysayer could likely take such a test and find nothing. That shouldn't satisfy you. Only if someone you know as a cable enthusiast (yourself, for example) takes the test will you lean toward believing the results. You or someone with your experience and like-mindedness could go a long way towards shutting the naysayers up for good. Do you see such a test occurring?

[E-Stat]

A diehard naysayer could likely take such a test and find nothing.

I was thinking more of a sample of listeners.

Only if someone you know as a cable enthusiast (yourself, for example) takes the test will you lean toward believing the results.

I really don't consider myself a cable enthusiast. Since moving the zip cord to the HT system many years back, I have used only two different kinds of speaker cable and I don't anticipate the need to change anytime soon. I maintain they are but the icing to an already good cake.

Do you see such a test occurring?

Certainly not. Those who claim no differences would never do it. Those who would couldn't care less. As is the case with virtually ever single audio company on the planet since none use such testing for any promotional purposes (at least in this century or for the past twenty years)

rw

[E-Stat]

Are acoustics important in the enjoyment of music?

Naturally. I have spent a fair amount of time and effort to improve the acoustics of my dedicated listening room to that end. Whether the source of the sound is a number of musicians or a set of speakers, the acoustics of a large venue play a significant part in the overall experience. I find that the best systems are able to better reproduce a number of spatial cues that are found in a quite a few acoustical instrument recordings. It can be spooky to very clearly hear hall boundaries that sound significantly larger than the room in which they are played, sans any artificial signal processing.

rw

[skeptic]

What little effect the acoustics of a live performance in a concert hall gets into any recording is hardly reproduced in anything like the way you experience it live.

Most of what you hear live is reverberation. In my experimentation with acoustics and electronic simulation of acoustics, I have given a great deal of thought about why concert hall acoustics improve the sound of music. Here are some of the conclusions I have reached so far.

Because reverberation falls off more rapidly at high frequencies the tone of musical instruments is mellower but still retains the sharp transient attack that gives it clarity. Clearer and mellower at the same time is a seeming contradicton to someone whose experience is limited to the reproduction of sound with today's technology but that is the enhancement to tonality you get from a concert hall.

Because the reverberant components are associated in your brain with the direct wave, and because the total energy of the sound of each musical note by each instrument is the area under a curve, not the initial amplitude of the sound, the perceived power of musical instruments as opposed to their loudness is very different. A pipe organ playing softly filling the acoustical space of a large church seems much more powerful to our brain than a recording of the same organ minus the reverberation played through a speaker at the same loudness or even at greater loudness at home. The ability of a great tenor to fill up the acoustical space of an opera house without amplification really separates the men from the boys when it comes to the quality of the human voice. The power of a symphony orchestra is totally lost in a recording where there is little or none of the reverberaton you'd hear at a live performance. Perhaps this is why audiophiles tend to play their sound systems so loud. It compensates for the relatively feeble power of the sound these instruments make at normal listening levels given the acoustics of home listening rooms.

The arrival of late reflections of one note at a live performance at the same time as the direct sound or early reflections of subsequent musical notes at the listener's ear creates harmonies and dissonances missing in recordings where the reverberation is minimal or absent.

Composer use reverberation and musicians adjust for acoustics of different spaces in the way they perform. One technique common in much serious music is the buildup to a crecendo often by a 100 piece orchestra, or a 300 voice chorus, or a pipe organ and then a sudden pause while the reverberation dies out. This period of time creates the tension and excitement of the next note which follows. Without this reverberation and dying out, the time interval where there is little or no sound becomes a musical discontinuity completely destroying the effect the composer and musicians were looking for.

There are many others but I think that this is sufficient to explain why IMO, the best state of the art sound systems today cannot even come close to reproducing what I consider the only music justifying the time, effort, and cost to develop the best technology to reproduce it. What you get instead is a pale facsimile which may explain why so few people like it. It also explains why IMO, the cost and effort to reproduce the last 5% of the 5% or 10% or 11% of the music that actually made it on to the recording is so rediculous. Meanwhile the other 90% or 95% of the music that is missing is ignored.

[bturk667]

I am being honest with myself! In my system, Nordost cables not only made a difference but a damn nice one. They are a valued piece to my audio puzzle!

[rb122]

Certainly not. Those who claim no differences would never do it. Those who would couldn't care less. As is the case with virtually ever single audio company on the planet since none use such testing for any promotional purposes (at least in this century or for the past twenty years) rw

Then the entire debate of cables is pointless as there is no workable solution as I see it.

[rb122]

I am being honest with myself! In my system, Nordost cables not only made a difference but a damn nice one. They are a valued piece to my audio puzzle!

That's great - I'm glad you're happy. I won't tell you you're imagining things and I won't tell you your perception is accurate. As Markw became the first "maysayer" to go along with the yeasayers and naysayers, I now proclaim myself the first "Playsayer"... as in just play music and don't worry. Or perhaps I'm an "Eitherwaysayer"... either way you prefer, science or listening. But to answer another of your posts on another board, I'm not a "counterweighsayer" in that I personally didn't try the Heavyweight counterweight for the Rega but I listened to it in another system and I didn't hear anything terribly worthwhile with the upgrade - nothing worth the $$$.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

What little effect the acoustics of a live performance in a concert hall gets into any recording is hardly reproduced in anything like the way you experience it live..

I hope this is not a global statement, and one specific to a particular recording or this statement is not sound. We hear binaurally. If you record binaurally you will experience the acoustics of the concert hall with a great deal of accuracy. If you record in 5.1, then it depends highly on how many microphones are used, there placement, and how well the mix is done.

Because reverberation falls off more rapidly at high frequencies the tone of musical instruments is mellower but still retains the sharp transient attack that gives it clarity. Clearer and mellower at the same time is a seeming contradicton to someone whose experience is limited to the reproduction of sound with today's technology but that is the enhancement to tonality you get from a concert hall...

The first part of you paragraph is true and false. HIgh frequencies are effected by reverberation. The farther you are from the source, the more reverberation is heard, the more the high frequencies are rolled off. However, the more the high frequencies are rolled off, the more blunted the transient attack is, and the less clarity is heard. Clearer and mellower is a contradiction, and therefore is NOT what is heard. Since reverberation is a series of reflections that are heard after the original signal, the longer the reverberation time, the less clear the source will sound. That is why engineers do not place their primary pickup systems in the audience, but right on stage with the musicians.

Because the reverberant components are associated in your brain with the direct wave, and because the total energy of the sound of each musical note by each instrument is the area under a curve, not the initial amplitude of the sound, the perceived power of musical instruments as opposed to their loudness is very different. A pipe organ playing softly filling the acoustical space of a large church seems much more powerful to our brain than a recording of the same organ minus the reverberation played through a speaker at the same loudness or even at greater loudness at home.

Much of what you are saying here is jibberish, and the second part is totally incorrect. A organ recording minus its location reverberation entails placing the microphones CLOSER to the source. This will indeed make the source LOUDER and more POWERFUL to the ears. A organ playing softly with all of its location reverberation recorded will sound distant, and less powerful because much of the high frequency component will be rolled off, which alters the freuqncy response of the organ. If you replay the recording minus the reverberation through a speaker it will sound more powerful than the on location with the reverberation because the source is now in the near field(the speaker), closer, and the ear perceives it as louder(Haas precedent effect)

The ability of a great tenor to fill up the acoustical space of an opera house without amplification really separates the men from the boys when it comes to the quality of the human voice.

Not really sure where you are going with this, or how it relates to what you have typed before it. ???

The power of a symphony orchestra is totally lost in a recording where there is little or none of the reverberaton you'd hear at a live performance..

[b]This is not true at all(where do these people get this stuff???) The frequency response and timbre will be different, but the amplitude will be percieved as louder because the microphones would have to be closer to the source to elimate the venue's reverberation. Reverberation does not add amplitude, nor is it equated to greater power. Reverberation becomes dominate the further you move from the source. As you travel farther from the source, the reverberation increases, but the amplitude of the direct signal decreases(which denotes a loss of power). When combined with the roll off of high frequencies, the source is percieve as losing MORE power.[\b]

Perhaps this is why audiophiles tend to play their sound systems so loud. It compensates for the relatively feeble power of the sound these instruments make at normal listening levels given the acoustics of home listening rooms...

I am really scratching my bald head on this one. I think most audiophiles play their systems loud so they can hear inner detail over the background noises that are found in the typical house. If what you assert is true, then what they say about the mighty Klipschorn speakers is a lie. Since I have three of the speakers myself, I can attest that NOTHING that comes out of that speaker is feeble.

The arrival of late reflections of one note at a live performance at the same time as the direct sound or early reflections of subsequent musical notes at the listener's ear creates harmonies and dissonances missing in recordings where the reverberation is minimal or absent. .

All of this is wrong. Reflections do not create harmonies(harmonics?) or dissonances. These come from the instruments directly as a result of individual notes, or mulitple notes being played simultaneously. Reflections alter the timbre and frequency response of the direct signal.

Composer use reverberation and musicians adjust for acoustics of different spaces in the way they perform. One technique common in much serious music is the buildup to a crecendo often by a 100 piece orchestra, or a 300 voice chorus, or a pipe organ and then a sudden pause while the reverberation dies out. This period of time creates the tension and excitement of the next note which follows. .

There some problems with this statement. Different venues have different reverberation decay times. These times will be perceived differently by each perfomer based on where they are located in relationship to the walls of the venue. You would also have to distinguish between high frequency decay, and low frequency decay(which is
we3wqwsaqwriting in decay time into the pieces is a silly proposition at best. Too many variables to make it effective.

Without this reverberation and dying out, the time interval where there is little or no sound becomes a musical discontinuity completely destroying the effect the composer and musicians were looking for..

[b] Can you site



There are many others but I think that this is sufficient to explain why IMO, the best state of the art sound systems today cannot even come close to reproducing what I consider the only music justifying the time, effort, and cost to develop the best technology to reproduce it. What you get instead is a pale facsimile which may explain why so few people like it. It also explains why IMO, the cost and effort to reproduce the last 5% of the 5% or 10% or 11% of the music that actually made it on to the recording is so rediculous. Meanwhile the other 90% or 95% of the music that is missing is ignored.[/QUOTE]

[skeptic]

I have been experimenting with acoustics, simulaton of acoustics, and the implications of acoustics for over thirty years. Your response suggests that you have given these concepts about thirty seconds of thought. You have not understood one thing I have said and it is therefore pointless for me to discuss it further with you.

I will give you one last thought to think about. While it is true that a binaural recording superficially resembles what you hear live, there is one very drastic difference. The sound field at a live performance is a vector field. The sound you hear in a binaural recording is two scalar fields. And therein lies a world of difference. If you don't understand this, I cannot help you.