Good Power Cord article from 6 Moons - Page 4

Quote:

Originally Posted by shamu144 

 

Simply because it is too complex to be measured.

No signal in audio electronics is too complex to be measured.  As far a systems signal measurement, processing and analysis, audio signals are by far some of the simplest things to measure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shamu144 

For me, their is no need to go further than just a little bit of good will and self involvement rather than sistematically calling out the scientist community to elaborate a thesis on a subject with such a limited repercussion.

There is certainly no good will on the part of the cable manufacturers.  It's simply business marketing.  Yes, the "repercussion" is basically just people getting ripped off and not being physically harmed as through unsafe medicines being sold.  However it's still fraud.  The involvement of the scientific community is exceptionally clear and necessary in this discussion.  You should consider the point of view from someone outside the debate, who may be considering a purchase.  To them, having an objective viewpoint may be useful.  As an example, I have told people shopping in department stores that they can find an HDMI cable online for about $5 instead of paying the absurd prices in the store.  The response is always amazement and appreciation.

I was actually refering to the human hearing and not audio signal, or rather measuring audio signal processed by our brains.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ert 

No signal in audio electronics is too complex to be measured.  As far a systems signal measurement, processing and analysis, audio signals are by far some of the simplest things to measure.

 

To be fair, they are many cable manufacturers that do not play a transparent game. But generalization is certainly not true. If you look further, you can find some very usefull information on cables or power cables published by manufacturers, or even easily arrange a meeting with your audio retailer for real life experience and not theory. Why is that you wouldn't trust your own ears. Let them be judge for you. Cables manufacturer certainly have a responsability here to educate us on those very debated topics.

Some examples of interesting reading published by manufacturers:

http://www.audioquest.com/pdfs/aq_cable_theory.pdf

http://www.furutech.com/news/cables_explained.pdf

http://www.shunyata.com/Content/FAQ-Tech.html

 Unfortunatley, the scientific community will not be of any help in this insignificant debate for them, or do you expect to shake the foundation of science by studying the properties of audio cables and their effect on sound. I highly doubt it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ert 

There is certainly no good will on the part of the cable manufacturers.  It's simply business marketing.  Yes, the "repercussion" is basically just people getting ripped off and not being physically harmed as through unsafe medicines being sold.  However it's still fraud.  The involvement of the scientific community is exceptionally clear and necessary in this discussion.  

 

Given the nature, purpose and function of power supplies, believing a power cord will make a difference is roughly the same as believing a CD would sound better if Amazon delivered it by FedEx rather than UPS.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shamu144 

 

I was actually refering to the human hearing and not audio signal, or rather measuring audio signal processed by our brains.

 

To be fair, they are many cable manufacturers that do not play a transparent game. But generalization is certainly not true. If you look further, you can find some very usefull information on cables or power cables published by manufacturers, or even easily arrange a meeting with your audio retailer for real life experience and not theory. Why is that you wouldn't trust your own ears. Let them be judge for you. Cables manufacturer certainly have a responsability here to educate us on those very debated topics.

 

Some examples of interesting reading published by manufacturers:

 

http://www.audioquest.com/pdfs/aq_cable_theory.pdf

http://www.furutech.com/news/cables_explained.pdf

http://www.shunyata.com/Content/FAQ-Tech.html

 Unfortunatley, the scientific community will not be of any help in this insignificant debate for them, or do you expect to shake the foundation of science by studying the properties of audio cables and their effect on sound. I highly doubt it.

 

Ah, so if we just rely on the manufacturers and retailers, we'll get the truth.  Good to know.  Thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shamu144 

 

I was actually refering to the human hearing and not audio signal

 

OK that's fine.  However the audio signal can be measured.  If a measurement on an audio signal shows identical results for two different cables, there is no reason to measure anything beyond that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shamu144 

 

Why is that you wouldn't trust your own ears.

Because placebo effect and expectation bias are clearly demonstrated phenomena in the scientific community.  There are thousands of peer reviewed journal articles to support this. We are testing two competing hypothesis.  To support the idea that perceived differences are placebo there is quite a bit of scientific evidence.  To support the idea that perceived differences are due to cable construction there is zero evidence.  The scientific process suggests we must identify the former as the more likely explanation.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by shamu144 

 

Some examples of interesting reading published by manufacturers:

There is no information of value in those documents.  The combine generally subjective claims with physical measurements that have no relation to the claims.  They might as well provide spectrometry results of the cable jacket showing how wavelength peaks make their cables better.  It is purely deceptive marketing.  Compare this to the labels on homeopathic products.  They claim that bumblebee dandruff diluted a quadrillion times can cure arthritis because the molecules leave an imprint on the water molecules.  There are plenty of impressive looking claims and pictures that may seem like science to the public.
 

Does placebo also apply to headphones, amps & sources, or is it just a limited effect to cables.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ert 

 

 

Because placebo effect and expectation bias are clearly demonstrated phenomena in the scientific community.  There are thousands of peer reviewed journal articles to support this. We are testing two competing hypothesis.  To support the idea that perceived differences are placebo there is quite a bit of scientific evidence.  To support the idea that perceived differences are due to cable construction there is zero evidence.  The scientific process suggests we must identify the former as the more likely explanation.

You missed my point. You should rely only on your own assessment and hearing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Monkey 

 

Ah, so if we just rely on the manufacturers and retailers, we'll get the truth.  Good to know.  Thanks.

 

Then why did you post the links to the misleading pseudoscience spewed forth by the marketing departments of the manufacturers?

I think it definitely applies to amps, probably sources and some to headphones. If you compare various headphones on Headphone.com you can see that many of them have very, very similar curves yet people will report they sound much different. How can that be? 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by shamu144 

 

Does placebo also apply to headphones, amps & sources, or is it just a limited effect to cables.

 

 

Because it might give you clues to understand what your ears are telling you. Hey, even children keep asking the whys all day. Why we adult should stop.  
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Monkey 

Then why did you post the links to the misleading pseudoscience spewed forth by the marketing departments of the manufacturers?

Maybe because there is a little bit more than FR response to explain how the human hearing perceive the sound.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by roadcykler 

I think it definitely applies to amps, probably sources and some to headphones. If you compare various headphones on Headphone.com you can see that many of them have very, very similar curves yet people will report they sound much different. How can that be? 

I've got some flashy power cables (like a  PS Audio Statement SC) and I started using them for a few weeks now. I cannot hear a difference. I do not have golden ears and my job does not involve any music skills. I can understand a power conditioner but agree with UE in that a decent power supply should tackle the problem anyway.

I'll probably keep them because they make me laugh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shamu144 

 

Does placebo also apply to headphones, amps & sources, or is it just a limited effect to cables.

 

 

It applies to all components.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by shamu144 

Because it might give you clues to understand what your ears are telling you.

 

My eyes tell me the Earth is flat, yet we can only know it is round by experimentation and reason.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles 

Sadly merely making a living from doing it is no guarantee that somebody is any good at something, training is however important but proper training needs to be rigorous and when Harman tested different sets of listeners they found that audio retailers did better than audio reviewers but neither group were within a mile of actually formally trained listeners...
 

Interesting one.

As a side note, I'd be surprised if musicians did any better... Here's a story that happened to me a few weeks back:

A friend of mine is a professional organist and musicology teacher. He recently bought a pair of new Kef speakers (quite nice actually) and so he asked me to come over to hear them. We settle in front of the system, he puts some music on. I let him comment on how nice the setup is. After a few seconds though, he's back commenting the interpretation of the piece. Still, something sounds weird to me. It was so obvious and unexpected that it took me a pair of minutes .. to realize that the left speaker was not making any sound.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 00940 

 

 

Interesting one.

 

As a side note, I'd be surprised if musicians did any better... Here's a story that happened to me a few weeks back:

 

A friend of mine is a professional organist and musicology teacher. He recently bought a pair of new Kef speakers (quite nice actually) and so he asked me to come over to hear them. We settle in front of the system, he puts some music on. I let him comment on how nice the setup is. After a few seconds though, he's back commenting the interpretation of the piece. Still, something sounds weird to me. It was so obvious and unexpected that it took me a pair of minutes .. to realize that the left speaker was not making any sound.

Well, it's a rather annoying fact to audiophiles thata lot of musicians don't care much about sound quality, they care about interpretation, structure, content, 90% of which can be heard through a pair of $50 headphones.
 

No, that is not a fact. I don't even think it's anywhere near the truth. I'm a musician who also have a degree in music. I can't speak for all musicians, but I can't listen to music on crappy sounding speakers or crappy sounding headphones. When I listen to music, there are certain things I'm listening for that you just can't hear on cheap gear. I and most of the musicians I know have invested a lot of money in audio gear. There are other musicians on this forum who have invested far more than I have. Yes I listen for theory related aspects when I listen to music, but I would have to pay far more attention than I would want to if I only had basic gear to rely on. Then it would be very difficult to also enjoy what I was listening to. Musicians in general have the ability to break down a piece of music while still being able to enjoy the piece they were listening to without over analyzing it. That's why to me, there's no such thing as an analytical headphone. I don't have to force myself to only listen to the technicalities and miss out on "enjoying the music"(yes pun intended). So please don't make statements like that about a certain group of people when you really have no clue. Some musicians might not care about good sound. But it's "not" a fact that a lot of them don't.