Cable Skeptics, Tubes and Opamps - Page 7

 You mean like how some people can see the difference between red and green and others cannot? That might make it relative, but it's not subjective.

 

 

 

Hallucinations?

 

I don't want to speak for alysony but that's a pretty good definition of subjectivity.  The same sensory input can and does produce different neurochemical reactions in different individuals.  It's not about people being unable to differentiate red and green, it's that no person's experience of "red" or "green" is perfectly identical to another persons.
 

I agree, Jusin.

I also think there has been too much emphasis on telling the difference between A and B. I do find those tests valid, but where they fall down is in convincing people they are valid.

Believers seem to put their belief on sighted listening reviews. Aha, there's the point of attack.

My idea is to give people a selection of cables to choose from and listen as they wish. Instead of determining the difference between A and B, they will review the cable. Give it a score from 1-10, write down their impressions of various things, etc. Comments and ratings will be entirely open. They will also be allowed to use their own cables for comparison. Anything will be allowed short of cutting the cables open.

The twist will be that some of the cables will be of purportedly excellent quality. I might even resheath a "good" cable. Others will be ordinary wire and some of them will be deliberately damaged. My favorite idea is brining a cable in seawater for a month or two.

I think the review results will prompt a horde of red faces. What if one of the golden eared believers gives high marks to the brine cable, while suspecting the cryo silver cable of being the brine cable, and then trashing it? What if the coathanger or rolled aluminum foil is loved by all?

This will clearly demonstrate that people can't tell the esoteric designs from lamp cord. Also, the reviews are going to be all over the map. People agree about particular cables here because it fits with our local folklore. Silver is bright, copper is warm, etc. But stripped of knowing what they're listening to, they're going to call the copper bright and the silver warm. And maybe the lamp cord with a resistor on the left channel will be proclaimed the best ever.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe the believers will nail down what's inside each cable and make me look like an idiot. In that case, I'll admit to being wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. But then I'll start building cables and recruit the listeners as employees to test new designs. Of course I'll pay them. Openly, of course. I don't like shills.

UE, long before the creation of the sound Science forum someone did a similar test here. I cant remember who, but it lasted for quite a while and of the large group who tried the cables only 1 guessed properly.  IIRC the cables were 1200n's pure copper ;) silver plated copper, and 99n's ;) pure silver.

 

Anyways, at the end of it all the cable guys STILL had an easy out:

Since they dont have any reference to compare to they cant be sure of their guesses. Many people will refute the validity of a DBT on the basis that audio memory is too short.

 

OTOH, with a large enough sample audience Im confident than you would get a reasonably normal distribution of guesses for each cable. The problem is getting the cables to a large enough audience. As we all know "passing the mystery box" can take some time.

More like which religion is the proper one to follow, and the aspect of food , well i think you got that right so you understood my reference too, i never compared a steak to a pizza.. But of course, isn't GOD in your thoughts and not in reality? I think your arguing with yourself now.Theirs a ton of things that could be turned into a subjective argument.

http://www.asdatoz.com/Documents/Website-%20Objective%20vs%20subjective%20ltr.pdf  I dunno someone might want to look at this. Belief falls under subjective.

I've been reading through these posts...it's very interesting but by now, man my brain hurts.

 

Perhaps I'll get shunned for not bringing anything constructive to the scientific aspects of this thread (and I wish I had more knowledge about this stuff to do so) but isn't there a point where nuance should always be set aside and focus placed upon the most important aspect which is the music?

 

I love my setup. I've heard setups worth multi-thousands more than mine with tubes hanging off of everything and thousand dollar cables plugged in...and you know what? I still love my setup.

 

I don't mean to say who cares about tubes and opamps and whether or not they change anything but at the end of the day...and this thread....to me, it's happily a moot point.

Agreed

We may have a subjective difference in experience of red and green, but that red and green are different is objective and observable.

 

Let's try out this theory on our original analogy. People claim they can see a difference between red and green. In our DBX test, people should therefore reliably be able to distinguish between a red object and a green object.

 

Interestingly, they can. Given that the origin of this analogy was to argue subjectivity meant that amps were obviously different... but only when we weren't testing; the analogy fails epicly.

Quote:

 

For me the magic phrase there is "could be turned into". It seems to be an appeal for semantics. I'm not really after metaphysics as they don't really affect the question at hand.
 

 

Do you mean the real aspects or the imagined ones?

 

Just assume for the sake of argument that my position is, in fact, the correct one. Isn't there advantage to spending less money on cables and amps? If you know you are hearing as good a sound your happiness should be just as high, should it not? Only now you have more money to spend where it will make a difference.

 

Conversely, if I assume your position is right, I want to know that too: because I might be wasting effort looking for better speakers when I really need better cables.
 

 

Well, the imagined ones won't help anyone...ever. Just the simple concept of excitement over a piece of gear is going to make anyone think initially that it sounds superior to what they've been listening to. But I'm talking about the real, scientific measurements.

 

I've seen graphed measurements relating to changes over burn in. Yet I've used my 702's for 300+ hours from brand new out of box till now and I'm still skeptical. They sound the same as always, but to me they've always sounded great. To others they sound terrible even after hundreds of hours of "burn in". And I still don't understand how you can "burn in" circuits on amps...aren't they either on or off? Sorry, bit of a tangent there...

 

I'm all about measurements, but if those measurements are subtle to the point that it barely has any effect on my ears, then you're absolutely right.  I would much rather spend money where it makes the MOST difference which is obvious for me-  the headphones.

Edited by dxanex - 12/1/10 at 11:27pm

 

Its not hard to tell that for yourself at all.

 

If you can get an ABx box run the tests as often as you want whenever you want. kapow, another audiophile FUD busted - ABx is invalid because the person taking the test is under pressure. Remove the pressure.

 

If you cant get an ABx box have a friend swap cables behind a curtain and ring a bell when hes done. The whole thing will take you an hour to do several tests.

 

Speakers are only slightly harder to ABx. The best way would be to record the speaker with a binaural head and play it back. The second is to again just get an ABX box and try to ignore the screwed up height/left-right cues caused by your speaker placements. 

 

Get better speakers, wire them up with ~18ga lamp cord.

Quote:

If you can tell by ABX then you've proven those two wires make different noise. If you cannot, maybe the next $5k of wires will :D

 

A negative proof is not deductively possible, only inductively... but I was mostly point out the consequence of either hypothetical.

 

Seems the best way would be to record the speakers with the binaural head then compare the files in soundforge or the like. Take the human side out of the equation.

 

Dave

 

There is nothing, I believe, in life where "the ends justify the means".  But for my musical enjoyment, I'll make an exception.  For the rest of my, (and others) observations, just read my signature.