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http://stefanaudioart.com/EquinoxHD590.html ($95 for 4-ft cable, 30 day guarantee)
http://www.headphile.com/page17.html ($60 for 3.3-ft cable, 15 day guarantee, check bottom of page for HD590 cable)

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There's always a reason the naysayers won't try it. "I don't need to, I know what the science says" or "It's not worth losing the shipping cost." Now we have : "I don't like what they say on their web site." Whatever. As I said before, nothing I say or anybody else says ever convinces a naysayer to try an aftermarket cable, because (IMO and with all due respect) they have a different agenda that really finding out whether they sound better.

The argument that the objectivist should try a cable is invalid. His/Her mind isn't somehow less suspectible or immune to psychological effects. Blind tests are needed...

The psychology of these things, of course, can have a positive effect on the brain analyzing what the ears receive. It's totally plausible that a high-end cable user enjoys the expensive cable more than a stock one, for instance. The effect is real, but it works both ways. The objectivist may have a mindset that cables don't make a difference if their electrical properties are good enough. He/She might reason that because it is trivial to make good cables for audio (according to physics), a cheap one will do. Now the objectivist may enjoy the cheap cable very well, because he/she knows that it is the best that can be achieved!

The fact that you seem to acknowledge that test condition can affect people ability to hear difference speaks volume by itself.
As I said before, I was in the same position as a lot of subjectivists in here.
Always thinking that those DBT tests were made to screw 'us'.
Name a factor in a DBT test that affect someone hearing ability.
I would say the inability to see what is being played although I don't believe we need our eyes to hear better.

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Hold the phone! Are you saying that even an objectivist that is convinced about the science and is positive that an aftermarket cable cannot possibly make a difference will be duped into believing that the cable sounds better? So the person who is not an objectivist and who thinks expensive cables or prettier cables might sound better is duped by the placebo effect into believing the cable is better? And the died-in-the-wool objectivist who thinks this is all bunk also won't be able to help himself and will necessarily hear things that aren't really there? How about if we get 100 objectivists? Will they all fall prey to this mysterious force that human reason and will cannot possibly combat? This, I think, is incredibly far-fetched. What is the phenomenon that explains a person who thinks all wire is the same being convinced, no matter how strong his opinons are, that one cable sounds better than another?

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It works both ways. The objectivist may be biased towards 'no difference' and therefore not recognize a difference which may exist (to many ears, even his). In case of a huge, astronomical difference it might not be very easy to fool the brain into believing there is no difference, but as it has been demonstrated, placebo is a very strong effect.

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Yes, but as I pointed out earlier in this thread, there do not seem to be very many people who have listened to a lot of cables in good systems who claim that all cables sound the same. There are objectivists who won't listen at all. And there are objectivists who have listened and heard differences who claim that, while they heard differences, they must have been hearing things. But there don't seem to be many who deny hearing differences at all. This seems rather odd if there are no differences to be heard.

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I don't think that Zu is dissing you. Their just dissing your system.

I recently had a fellow head-fier bring his Bel Canto DAC for a comparison. I heard very little difference with it compared to my ancient Pioneer PD-65. I was ignorantly blaming my system for not being resolving enough to bring out the best in the Bel Canto DAC .

IMO there are no differences between cables/connectors unless the ones being replaced are very poorly designed/worn/corroded or they are being used in an environment that requires shielding. This is a pointless thread though, people on one side claiming the cables they own make a difference but they haven't blind tested them. Others, like me, stating facts and experience but have never blind tested cables either. Blind testing is king, if you can't hear a difference with your eyes closed and first feelings on short passages of simple music you don't know well (believe me you can hear changes a lot more this way) then I'm 99.99% sure there isn't one. I think people who tweak their system are scared that it doesn't satisfy them in some way, and they don't want to change it.

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Well, that's good enough for me then. It's settled.

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Thanks for YOUR FACTS

Fact - some people can hear a difference, others cant
Fact - some system will produce a difference, others cant

Is there a diffence between 87 or 89 octane gas? Well if i had a 100hp car, then there wont be a difference. If i put that gas into a 300 hp car, well then there will be a difference. Difference system will be able to show minute differences. A lower system (100hp car) will not show a difference, while a higher system (300hp car) will. Now if i took the 300hp car to a 1/4 mile track and ran it with 87 and then 89 octane will i see a difference? Most likely not. But if i had John Force drive the 1/4 mile will there be a difference? Most likely. Why? Because John Force can drive the car better then me, ie he is able to do something that i cant (different ppl will have difference in hearing). I know its a crappy analogy but i'm trying to get people to understand MY facts.

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I have a better analogy.

I'd liken speaker cables to putting a spoiler on your Honda Civic. Some drivers will believe that it makes their car handle better and drive faster, even if the difference is negligible. These people will swear that they are better racers with their spoiler. That's not to say it's orthless: They might enjoy their car more because they have an improved impression of it. Other people will see no difference, and won't even notice the spoiler is there.

I guess I'll cast my vote. I was a staunch cable dis-believer. I just recabled my audio technica ATH-910 with canare quad-4 and they've opened up substantially. noticeably more depth now.

I guess the question is "how much of my impressions are psycho acoustics and how much of it is physical acoustics?" ???

I dont know, and I really dont care all I know is my brain likes what its hearing.... and my eyes really dig the slick black tech-flex...

Garrett

There are a lot of claims about failed blind tests. Couldn't it be that this one-sided reports are the result of a partial blindness of the objectivist camp? After all it's the objectivists who put so much weight on blind tests. However, I agree that absolving a blind test is not so easy as many subjectivists may believe. Two Head-Fi friends and I did a blind test with HD-650 cables -- I was the test person and chose Oehlbach and Zu Mobius as test subjects. We wrapped some self-adhesive velours foil around the Oehlbach to achieve a similar stiffness and feel as the Mobius, although actually the goal was not to have contact with the cable. Well, it wasn't a too well-though-out test, because all we had for blindfolding was a kitchen towel, wrapped around the head. Unfortunately it seriously affected the feel of the headphone on the ears, and I think also the sound characteristic was affected to some degree.

After all I had 9 right guesses out of 12. There was no lawyer present, so take the result with the grain of salt if you like. Well, it's 75% right and only 25% wrong. But to be honest, I didn't feel comfortable and secure at all under these unfamiliar circumstances, and first I wasn't too happy with the result either. Anyway, there wasn't a second that I doubted that cables can really make a difference. I rather question blind tests as such, in their usual form. I think you need to know what you hear, at least it should be designated as A and B. With a randomized sequence of samples it's too hard to differentiate, they tend to sound the same or offer phantom differences. Have you ever been in a Samadhi tank? Well, I haven't myself, but from what I know you begin to sort of hallucinate in the dark, isolated from reality. I felt a bit that way during the test.

It would be better to make a test with unblinded eyes -- of course it could nevertheless be a blind test where you don't know which cable is running at the moment. But you could tell it's A or B or -- even better -- let the test person switch between two cables (with a switcher) without seeing them. (So better take interconnects than headphone cables!) Then repeat the same test several times with arbitrarily changed allocations. So you can finally gain a percentage of right guesses as well. And it's much more like in real life and less disturbing for the test person.