Any prove cables make a difference? - Page 20  

I did check. I asked you, which is more than many here would do. Frankly, I took the fact that you are sill posting in this thread combined with your lack of response to my inquiry be an affirmation. Now you say something, much later.

You haven't said that my impression that people are getting testy is incorrect, though, you've only tried to imply that other people's testiness may "all be in my head"--an amusingly ironic position to try on me, and one to which I would turn to your "standard of proof" which is that I'm not obligate to "prove" anything: {you} "Let the challenger find out on his own if he cares to do so. Otherwise, the challenger might as well reject the claim, and the claimant wouldn't care, because he stopped advocating that claim for acceptance by that challenger." Granted, that isn't my standard but since it is yours, why not use it here?

Now, as to my "not understanding" arguments and analogies before criticizing them, I think that you may misunderstand my disagreement with lack of understanding--with the presumption being that anyone who would argue with you wouldn't do so if they "understood" your points. This presupposes that your points are flawless, a standard that is very high, indeed.

Whatever the case, we have moved from arguing about standards and ways of knowing to arguing small things. I do not think much stands to be accomplished if one were to extend the trend. As much as I enjoy rhetorical devices, I would prefer a discussion based on the merits. But no such agreement can be reached here.

That pretty much sums up the situation--the presumption that there must be proof somewhere because such an assumption seems reasonable. However, if there was sound proof I think it is likely that the veritable army of audiophiles would tout it. (No insult meant by the use of the word "tout" :-) )

In fact, as much as I'd like to be able to dismiss Interconnect Cable claims out of hand, there can't be generic "proof" that no cable can make an audible difference since we know for fact that high quality cables do exhibit measurable differences in inductance, capacitance, ect.. The only thing we can test are specific cables when someone makes a positive claim. This is just one of the many reasons why the burden of proof is on the positive claimant.

Yeah, sorry about that. I was going to sleep (--> CET) and somehow missed your post.
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reano: Just try two interconnects with rather different capacity between a turntable with a magnetic cartridge and a phono stage. If you still can't hear a difference, you might already suffer from hearing loss.

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

Well I might have been testy. Don't think was too big a deal though, compared to other heated things in this thread, and don't feel at all bad to admit it.

When someone argues against someone else's position without respecting the limits of what the opponent had literally written, by carelessly transforming the ideas presented, that might certainly induce testiness, at least on some. In political debates tactics like that (simply misrepresenting or deforming the opponent's arguments) are frequently used just to simply annoy the heck out of the opponents, or to simply confuse the "jury" or audience on what the opponent is trying to say.


Honestly I don't think that was the case here. To pretend that anyone who disagrees with me did not understand me would be magnanimously foolish. In my view you are too eager to simply push forward your own point of view, and you disregard the true scope of what your opponents truly say/write, which suggests lack of interest in true communication.

You seem too confident that your first read of anything will pretty much always be correct and faithful to what the writer intended to convey. But let me tell you, in several ocassions in this thread you have made me wonder if I had written what I thought I had written; or whether someone else wrote something else afterwards from which you responded. That or else, that I'm not writing clearly enough, that's certainly another possibility; or else, that you simply didn't read correctly what I had said; or also, that maybe you intentionally perverted what I had said. I went back on a couple of times and read my posts again, then the following posts, then your responses, and no, I keep seeing no clear reason for your argumentative misinterpretations/transgressions of what I had written. Hence testiness.

Ahem...perhaps by carelessly quoting the wrong quote and responding with a complete and total non sequitur?

As you are probably aware, the quote of mine you included was a communication to Jazz that literally has nothing to do with anything you or I have discussed. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were just being "careless" and not clueless in this instance.

Indeed, misstating someone's argument and then attacking that misstatement is called a straw argument. However, that isn't what I did. What I pointed out was that your analogy wasn't, IMO, analogous and I pointed out many factors to support my case. You can argue that it was but that in no way means that I mis-represented your argument. Once again, I think that you are confusing legitimate argument with logical fallacy.

...said the kettle to the pot. You really aren't going to get anywhere by trying and argue--post after post--that other people are too argumentative. But I will give you--who has never budged from his position--rhetoric points for having the gumption of accusing me of being "too eager to simply push forward your own point of view." You can't use this sort of rhetorical method and then, the same post, claim to eschew tactics that "simply confuse the "jury" or audience on what the opponent is trying to say."

Corrected, that was a typo of mine.

Guys, it's just cables. How about keeping the personalities out of it and discuss the issues, whatever they might have been.

To support your case you started saying that my analogy was a comparison of not "apples and apples", and took off describing differences between video and audio technology which had nothing to do with my point, or even with the discussion under consideration in the thread in fact.

The analogy I made clearly had to do with perception of video and audio inputs within the human thresholds, while still some details/artifacts within those thresholds might escape the untrained human. Not only the original post shows that scope, also the subsequent elaboration. Yet, your response to my analogy had nothing to do with that, and you keep pretending that you understood my point, but that you just "disagree" with it.

Your response also claimed that I was "making an implied comparison of the differences in DVD players to the differences in audio cables" which is absolutely not the case. And yes, go back and read again to convince yourself. (Had I implied a comparison it would have been between the non-trivialness of detecting video artifacts or differences with the non-trivialness of detecting audio artifacts or differences. Nothing more, and a very different thing.)

You keep making a stronger case of simply not reading and/or not communicating. It is really pointless to try to argue constructively in these conditions.

Au contraire, my criticisim of your analogy had everything to do with perception. My point was that your criticism of Bigshot by way of analogy was flawed. Your argument was that "superhuman" hearing was not required to hear the differences in audio cables. You analogized that people could tell the difference between DVD players without needing to "see "Superviewable" frequencies of light." However, I pointed out that ability to see the differences between different DVD players and to hear the difference between audio-cables was not analogous because the two kinds of differences are an order of magnitude apart. The technology and visible gamut of TV vs reality make the differences between DVD players within the normal physical abilities of people, where as high quality audio technology has a gamut that exceeds human physical perceptions (know anyone who can hear 30K??). Thus your analogy was not analogous. No straw argument needed or used.

If you are going to persist in dogmatically accusing me of being wrong without a sound basis for your accusation you risk being the thing you accuse me of. I think thou dost protest too much.

Pesky voice of reason...

No, the topic starter bailed a while ago, but not, I think, because of any argument. It was never clear to me what he really wanted to know or prove or disprove.

By now this is really a "Just Us Chickens Here" thread about generalities and the argumentation of such. Only people who want to be here are here and the thread was titled "Any {proof} cables make a difference," so it seems reasonable to discuss the matter.

It really isn't possible to come to any sound conclusions without data and part of the argument is about whether one has a right to even ask for sound data. And even if we had sound data it would probably only apply to a specific cable or two--still allowing/demanding an argument to continue on general principle.

As for removing personalities--well that would be impossible because while the facts about the issues may be independent of our belief in them, what we believe the facts are, and the way come to that belief is integral to our personalities. Often, "Intuitive" vs. "Empirical."

If we really wanted to advance this thread we could perhaps state clearly in a bulleted list what we believe, why we believe it and what it would take to change our minds (and be honest about whether our minds are, in fact, open to change.)

Actually the clue is rather that many people can't tell the difference between DVD players, although it wouldn't take supersenses to do so. -- I fully understand rsaavedra's argument, while for some reason you don't. It's an adequate analogy to show that not all people have the same seeing/hearing abilities and training may absolutely have an impact.
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Just your friendly neighborhood moderator trying to lower the volume a bit.

Just when I thought I was successful...

Hey, was that too loud?
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It was fine. I just wanted to steer it away from a continuation of the same argument. No problem.