Cable Skeptics, Tubes and Opamps - Page 4

The end result of this thread will be the same as the rest. An on going battle for sure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guidostrunk 

The end result of this thread will be the same as the rest. An on going battle for sure.

Do you have any original thoughts to contribute to this thread? I agree it odes seem a shame to give something away when its in such short supply, so do you have anything to move the thread towards the end you prefer? 

Quote:

Originally Posted by VictoriaGuy 

... tubes change over time, and that even 'out of the box' some tubes are noisier than others, more microphonic, for example. All those things are easily measured, I think. (Unlike the 'PRAT' of a piece of wire.....)

 

My point exactly.  Why give up on any measurement endeavor that isn't "easy"?  Perhaps the "PRaT" of a wire could be measured ... perhaps via some complex 4D amalgam of group delay, phase delay, square wave shape, whatever, who knows?  But no one tries.  The people with the resources just scoff, and listeners are left with nothing but their imperfect impressions, and neither side is entirely right.  I repeat, I believe everything can be described mathematically, but over the years it has become clear to me that the strict bah-humbug objectivists seek comfort and reassurance inside a warm and cozy cult just as much as the wildest-eyed subjectivists.

Yep.

Probably because no one has ever even successfully demonstrated differences in cables in a dbt. You say the measurements are wrong, but no one has ever proved that they've even heard a difference. You can critique dbt all you like, but it's the only way to prove the subjective experience is real.

Quote:

Originally Posted by InnerSpace 


The people with the resources just scoff

The way i see it, some believe others do not. Just like religion and politics there will never be a deciding factor to end the battle. To many subjective opinions with no proof either way. My ears tell me there is, but that will not apply to everyone. For argument sake, people should just stick with their own opinions and not shove it down someone Else's throat, which seems to always happen every time CABLES are debated.And the whole placebo thing is funny, it only applies one way, people who hear sonic differences with different cables but doesn't seem to apply to people who don't which leaves me confused about the whole placebo thing. The way i see it placebo should be a 2 way street with both sides on different ends of the spectrum.Someone believes they do not hear differences, the other person does believe they hear a difference, my question is who's suffering from the placebo effect?IMO the cable debate is a waste of time and we should just get over it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod 

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guidostrunk 

The end result of this thread will be the same as the rest. An on going battle for sure.

Do you have any original thoughts to contribute to this thread? I agree it odes seem a shame to give something away when its in such short supply, so do you have anything to move the thread towards the end you prefer? 

The fact that it can't be demonstrated in a dbt seems pretty decisive to  me

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guidostrunk 

The way i see it, some believe others do not. Just like religion and politics there will never be a deciding factor to end the battle. To many subjective opinions with no proof either way.

 

That's the dbt not my ears.If the results from it are decisive enough for you,then your debate is settled and so is mine

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antony6555 

The fact that it can't be demonstrated in a dbt seems pretty decisive to  me

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guidostrunk 

The way i see it, some believe others do not. Just like religion and politics there will never be a deciding factor to end the battle. To many subjective opinions with no proof either way.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guidostrunk 

...And the whole placebo thing is funny, it only applies one way, people who hear sonic differences with different cables but doesn't seem to apply to people who don't which leaves me confused about the whole placebo thing. The way i see it placebo should be a 2 way street with both sides on different ends of the spectrum.Someone believes they do not hear differences, the other person does believe they hear a difference, my question is who's suffering from the placebo effect?IMO the cable debate is a waste of time and we should just get over it. 

Professional level DBT protocols should include both positive and negative controls - differences which are expected by previous studies to be audible are included to detect subjects with poor resolving ability - and there are JND detection protocols which can incorporate training too

many amateur DBT tests are poorly designed and ran but psychoacoustic testing of audible perception can be well done

the academic community would welcome new fields to do studies and write papers on - even one acceptable quality paper in a peer reviewed journal showing "unexplained" cable effects would spark dozens of follow up studies
 

I don't think the question if cables make a difference or not, they do for many reasons, physical structure,vibrations, various electrical effects etc.

I think the question for many is are these differences audible and do they apply to the audio band.

DBT is a good tool, the problem is it is difficult to set up on a large scale for something so esoteric.

Dave

Further,

I am not sure its the neglect of those in the trade to conduct testing of the cables, but oerhaps a limit of technology. 

General electric tools, such as oscilloscopes, have their own noise that contribute to their measurements as well as being generally susceptible to emi/rfi. 

Its a bit like the uncertainty principle in the respect that when you are attempting to measure subtleties in cabling in a certain bandwidth, the noise around does not allow for accurate measurements. 

This is unlike the uncertainty principle in that I believe it is possible to improve the tech and take reliable measurements; it's just a matter of time.

Dave

Quote:

Originally Posted by InnerSpace 

 The people with the resources just scoff, and listeners are left with nothing but their imperfect impressions, and neither side is entirely right.

This idea that 'neither side is entirely right' is the current fashion- you can see it all the time on 'the news', where somebody's idea of 'balance' is to present two opposing views on every issue.

If you 'buy in' to the notion of scientific method, and proof, and logic,(and how the heck can you use a computer and not recognize that 'science works'??)  then one side can certainly be 'entirely right' and one side can be 'entirely wrong'.

You can get anybody to 'hear things' just by telling them to 'pay attention', so showing somebody a $1000 power cord makes it pretty easy for them to 'hear the difference'.  And this from some people who couldn't tune a guitar to save their lives. (And who think their ears are so sensitive that they can discern a difference after changing the last 4 feet of the 500 mile-long power transmission line from the generator to the amplifier...)

Nobody ever made a buck from stating that 'psychoacoustics is real'........

It's pretty rare to hear hobbyists who can actually design circuits (or even build something from scratch) talk about the effect of cables(unless they are marketing their own line of overpriced stuff). Everybody wants to think they can 'improve' their system, and if you can't solder, spending money and plugging in cables is the obvious path to take.

Gordon Gow drove a stake through the heart of the  speaker cable debate years ago, but human nature just keeps reviving it.

John

DBT is subjectively determined. How would that fit in a mathematical formula? If you are going to accept math and science, DBT has no purpose. If you are going to accept subjective opinion from DBT, you have to accept subjective evidence countering it. If not, I call BS.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper 

DBT is subjectively determined. 

Please elaborate.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper 

DBT is subjectively determined. How would that fit in a mathematical formula? If you are going to accept math and science, DBT has no purpose. If you are going to accept subjective opinion from DBT, you have to accept subjective evidence countering it. If not, I call BS.

The evidence, when taken by itself, is just evidence. DBT or sighted listening impressions it is all just evidence. I would argue that objectivity & subjectivity come into play when using this argument to form conclusions and hypotheses.

If I were to say that a sweater is orange, and someone else were to say that the same sweater is yellow are both data points, neither subjective or objective. If I were to measure the sweater with a spectrometer and find that it is emitting light with a peak around 600nm, then we have a third data point. If everyone's eyes are different, which conclusion seems more "objective"? :

1. The sweater is yellow

2. The sweater is orange

3. The sweater is primarily 600nm light. Call the color whatever the heck you want.

Edit: Also note that in this simple example, the more objective conclusion is reached when you take human bias out of the picture. I wonder what this might tell us...