Quote:

steve eddy said:

 

Click to expand...

 
 
http://www.q-audio.com/  Is this your site?
 
 
I find it very surprising that you would be supporting arguments against cables making an audible difference when you sell them yourself (if you are indeed a member of the trade as it says below your name). 

Not to speak for Steve, but there are a good number of usability and aesthetic reasons for nicer cables, beyond any possible audible component.

Quote:

liamstrain said:

That's akin to saying there are only open or closed headphones to choose between ... and we know and can measure differences between different models within them. Some people can tell the differences better than others, but they are measurable. Ditto wine. Thrown them in a spectrometer and you'll see the differences. This is not the case with two cables of equal resistance/inductance/capacitance but different materials. 
 

Click to expand...

Actually what I said was I find it difficult to tell the difference between various Chardonnays.....................sheeesh!
 
A different insulator can change velocity of propagation and the capacitance.
In addition, you can measure change in dielectric absorption dissipation factor.
 
 

Quote:

chris j said:

Actually what I said was I find it difficult to tell the difference between various Chardonnays.....................sheeesh!
 
A different insulator can change velocity of propagation and the capacitance.
In addition, you can measure change in dielectric absorption dissipation factor.
 
 

Click to expand...

Fine - though I think you'd be hard pressed to find significant differences between the most commonly used insulators and dielectrics. But now unlike esters and dissolved oils and other organic components which contribute to flavor in wine by their very nature - you need to show me first that those things can have an effect on sound. And second, that the differences between them are significant enough to be audible (or even appear in the audible measurements, never mind the ear's capabilities). Currently that's not much different than saying this wine comes with a screw cap, not a cork, regardless of any correlation to its taste (while I'm sure there would be something measurable - evaporation rate, or something, we could point to in measurements - which would have a massively minimal effect under normal use, or obviously, a bad cork).

Quote:

liamstrain said:

Fine - though I think you'd be hard pressed to find significant differences between the most commonly used insulators and dielectrics. But now unlike esters and dissolved oils and other organic components which contribute to flavor in wine by their very nature - you need to show me first that those things can have an effect on sound. And second, that the differences between them are significant enough to be audible (or even appear in the audible measurements, never mind the ear's capabilities).

Click to expand...

wine "experts" get fooled all the time by DBT wine tastings. Often the cheap wine wins.
I think it is really pushing it to say one vintage is better than another, cos I can't tell the difference.
 
BTW, I am merely stating that there are a lot of things you can do to a cable to change it's properties.  Maybe some mad genius will someday prove cables actually do sound different. Until then, I try to keep an open mind.
Take a look at some of jnjn's posts.
 
Psychology, now there's an exact science for you!
We used to live down the street from a Psychologist. I'm fairly certain he thought his patients were an ATM. I also think he was a psychologist just so he could control other people's lives.   Man, am I off topic!

 
 

Quote:

chris j said:

wine "experts" get fooled all the time by DBT wine tastings. Often the cheap wine wins.
I think it is really pushing it to say one vintage is better than another, cos I can't tell the difference.
 
BTW, I am merely stating that there are a lot of things you can do to a cable to change it's properties.  Maybe some mad genius will someday prove cables actually do sound different. Until then, I try to keep an open mind.
Take a look at some of jnjn's posts.

Click to expand...

But the wines taste different... its just that sometimes the cheap one is better. Here we have not been able to show they "taste different," never mind which is better. 
 
I can dig it. I'm just trying to stop people from making the claims "copper is warmer, silver is brighter, X connector is smoother, Y insulation is silkier" or whatever. None of that crap has ever been shown to be audible under any moderately objective test... Sure we can make bad cables that sound like crap, and we can deliberately design inductance loops and other nastiness...
 
But it is becoming increasingly clear that any reasonably well built cable of sufficient capacitance/resistance for the load required... under normal use (no matter how high end your kit, or golden your ears), will be indistinguishable from another if you don't know what cable is in place or how much you paid for it. 

Quote:

liamstrain said:

But the wines taste different... its just that sometimes the cheap one is better. Here we have not been able to show they "taste different," never mind which is better. 
 
I can dig it. I'm just trying to stop people from making the claims "copper is warmer, silver is brighter, X connector is smoother, Y insulation is silkier" or whatever. None of that crap has ever been shown to be audible under any moderately objective test... Sure we can make bad cables that sound like crap, and we can deliberately design inductance loops and other nastiness...
 
But it is becoming increasingly clear that any reasonably well built cable of sufficient capacitance/resistance for the load required... under normal use (no matter how high end your kit, or golden your ears), will be indistinguishable from another if you don't know what cable is in place or how much you paid for it. 

Click to expand...

 
I don't think different vintages taste different. Just my opinion. Maybe I'm just an ignorant slob!  LOL!
 
I think if the cable controversy ever gets resolved (LOL!) we will find that it has nothing to do with LCR. Let's call this primary effects, for the sake of argument.
In an interconnect, resistance is so low as to be irrelevant.
Normally you want capacitance and inductance to be as low as possible.
Same thing in headphone cables.
In low fequency signals like audio you DO NOT match the impedance of the cable to the source or the load. Some folks seem to think you "match impedances" in audio analog circuits.
 
If there really are differences in sound then it will probably come down to cable geometry, insulation material, shielding type/no shielding, etc. basically "secondary" effects.
 
The Russ Andrews thing troubles me, the cable actually does something but Russ Andrews manages to shoot themselves in the foot by using improper test methods, inappropriate source and load termination and, What, not grounding the cable.
As jnjn can attest to, EMC is a very arcane subject.
Two very noted experts on this stuff, Howard Johnson & Martin Graham, actually titled their books: "High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic" and "High Speed Signal Propagation: Advanced Black Magic".
BTW, they don't believe in audiophile cables. LOL!
Howard Johnson once proposed building a speaker cable which looks a lot like Nordost's flat speaker cables.
 
 

.

Quote:

deadeight said:

 
 
http://www.q-audio.com/  Is this your site?
 
 
I find it very surprising that you would be supporting arguments against cables making an audible difference when you sell them yourself (if you are indeed a member of the trade as it says below your name). 

Click to expand...

That is indeed steve's site.  And I've never seen him make any audibility claims typical of some vendors. 


Quote:

chris j said:

Actually what I said was I find it difficult to tell the difference between various Chardonnays.....................sheeesh!
 
A different insulator can change velocity of propagation and the capacitance.
In addition, you can measure change in dielectric absorption dissipation factor.
 
 

Click to expand...

My response was to this statement of yours:
 
In addition, why do we accept the outlandish claims the wine connoisseurs make?
 
A while back, I pretty much would have agreed with that.  My experience is no longer that.

cheers, jn
 

Quote:

jnjn said:

That is indeed steve's site.  And I've never seen him make any audibility claims typical of some vendors. 
My response was to this statement of yours:
 
In addition, why do we accept the outlandish claims the wine connoisseurs make?
 
A while back, I pretty much would have agreed with that.  My experience is no longer that.

cheers, jn
 

Click to expand...

Oh well.
It is my fate in life to never be a wine connoisseur.
Enjot your wine in good health!
Sorry, no wine glasses available.

 
 

liamstrain said:

Not to speak for Steve, but there are a good number of usability and aesthetic reasons for nicer cables, beyond any possible audible component.

Click to expand...

Yep - I look at it the same way. My wife's fancy purse doesn't actually hold her various personal effects any better than the cheapest walmart bag, but it looks really nice, feels good and is a lot more durable than many alternatives. There's certainly value to these qualities, as with any luxury item.

Absent hard evidence of sonic benefits, I will continue to put after-market cables in the same category: desirable to audiophiles as a way of showing off to their friends, belonging to a community of sorts and making their gear look more sophisticated.

Nothing wrong with any of this, I just prefer to spend my money elsewhere.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

Quote:

maverickronin said:

.......

Maybe this is just a difference of semantics but do you mean differences that are simply perceived to exist or differences in the sound waves produced by the transducers actually demonstrated to be detectable by a human ear?
 
I would argue the first kind of difference isn't something that was "heard" because it does not correlate with the sound waved detected by the ear.
 

Click to expand...

I mean perception of a difference, but a perception that people do hear as being real, so to all intents and purposes it should be treated as real. Try convincing someone who has heard a difference that they have in fact not!
 

Quote:

prog rock man said:

I mean perception of a difference, but a perception that people do hear as being real, so to all intents and purposes it should be treated as real. Try convincing someone who has heard a difference that they have in fact not!

Click to expand...

 
I guess its a matter of semantics then.
 
In that situation I'd say that I thought I heard a difference but the evidence indicates that I didn't actually hear anything different and my perception was influenced by other factors.
 
Loose terminology will lead to misunderstandings and outright equivocations.  I think such tight definitions are important in these types of discussions.  In colloquial usage its ok to saw that you "saw" or "heard" something in a dream because pretty much everyone understands that dreams are only in your head and saying that you "saw" or "heard" something is simply shorthand because being more precise and saying that you perceived or experienced something is inconsistent with the normal flow of casual conversation.  If you did happen to be in a discussion about the nature of dreams then you'll probably have to use more precise language to enable clear communication.
 
For example, if you grant Harley's premise that real audible differences disappear under controlled conditions then it implies the components actually perform differently based on the listeners knowledge of them or something else along those lines.  As there is no evidence to imply that this does happen, no known mechanism to enable it, would probably overturn a great deal of well supported science if it was true, and because the listener's subjective experience is already explained by psychology such a hypothesis is untenable until it is backed up with substantial evidence.
 
That's why precise language is useful.

Quote:

maverickronin said:

 
I guess its a matter of semantics then.
 
In that situation I'd say that I thought I heard a difference but the evidence indicates that I didn't actually hear anything different and my perception was influenced by other factors.
 
Loose terminology will lead to misunderstandings and outright equivocations.  I think such tight definitions are important in these types of discussions.  In colloquial usage its ok to saw that you "saw" or "heard" something in a dream because pretty much everyone understands that dreams are only in your head and saying that you "saw" or "heard" something is simply shorthand because being more precise and saying that you perceived or experienced something is inconsistent with the normal flow of casual conversation.  If you did happen to be in a discussion about the nature of dreams then you'll probably have to use more precise language to enable clear communication.
 
For example, if you grant Harley's premise that real audible differences disappear under controlled conditions then it implies the components actually perform differently based on the listeners knowledge of them or something else along those lines.  As there is no evidence to imply that this does happen, no known mechanism to enable it, would probably overturn a great deal of well supported science if it was true, and because the listener's subjective experience is already explained by psychology such a hypothesis is untenable until it is backed up with substantial evidence.
 
That's why precise language is useful.

Click to expand...

I would argue that there often are differences in various cables which can be measured, perhaps we just can't hear them as they are buried or swamped by other distortions and/or noise.
Or the effects are outside the audio bandwidth. In other words, insignificant.
Russ Andrews was claiming there are measureable differences in various power cables which appears to be very true,  they lost their case because they could not prove their ultimate claim: the differences are audible.   If the power supplies in your audio equipment have an adequate power supply noise rejection ratio, then having a "better" audio cable or a superior power conditioner may very well be irrelevant.
 
 

Quote:

chris j said:

I would argue that there often are differences in various cables which can be measured, perhaps we just can't hear them as they are buried or swamped by other distortions and/or noise.
Or the effects are outside the audio bandwidth. In other words, insignificant.

Click to expand...

I get that part.  Different cables which are considered "good enough" by the usual RLC standards can measure differently by tiny but statistically significant amounts.
 
My point was that if there are golden ears who can actually hear that sort of thing there is no reason to suggest that those differences disappear when they no longer know what cable they're listening to.