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Audiophile cables, an interesting question. - Page 5

post #61 of 244
9/25/11 at 5:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Willakan View Post

Quote:

Originally Posted by Megaohmz View Post



 


I quite frequently change cables between equipment and notice a difference almost all of the time. I replaced the original cable from a set of Sennheiser HD570s with a few different cables, one from Radio Shack, and one I made and there is a difference always. The last post was just one example of a pretty big difference I experienced. I have also changed RCA cables between my Dual 701 turntable and Marantz 2270 receiver and noticed an extreme difference, since the RCA that was soldered in place within the turntable was the original from 1973. I have built probably about 200 or so computer video cables in my time and if you get one wire soldered wrong, or if it is a weak solder then it drastically affects video quality on a video test. Same with audio. It boils down to wire quality: inherent resistance of the material used for making wire, whether it is stranded or solid, length of wire, if the connections will corrode over time, etc. Some people don't notice a difference it makes, but if you listen for a minute or so and then let your ears settle in to the sound of one cable, and then change it you might notice a difference for better or worse.

 

Shielding quality is a big factor especially in a CD/Whatever to Eq to preamp stage to amplifier. If the shielding is poor, then you will almost always get noise from EMF. And between each piece of stereo equipment, the noise will be additive in nature, also depending on how long the cables are. 

 

There seems to me to be a significant devaluation of the appreciation of quality audio equipment here. I guess we can all just go back to using lamp wire for use as speaker wire?

 

Firstly, you didn't answer the question.

The sentence in bold is just so incredibly elitist I don't really feel saying why would make you come across any worse.
 

 



 



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Originally Posted by Head Injury View Post


All blind tests right?

 

I always offer a 100% money back guarantee on all of my posts.

 

 

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post #62 of 244
9/25/11 at 6:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ViralRazor View Post

Well, debate has been going on for a while, do "audiophile" cable upgrades actually work, with a stronger debate going on for actual analogue signals.

 

I've just got a short post and a interesting question to share:

 

Assuming that changing cables changes sound signature and that its true, why do we never see people talking about how their sound quality from their headphones/speakers took a turn for the worse when they changed out from stock cables to "audiophile" cables. Would transmitting a slightly with ever so slightly less interference improve subjective sound quality at all? If the sound signature is changed, surely there must be some people who are disappointed with this change in sound. And yet we never see this when someone changes from a stock cable to a custom cable.



I guess you have not read enough to really understand what folks are believing. If you read around you will read about many people selling their silver headphone cable modified headphones. If you have a custom made pure silver headphone cable and change amps to new sound signature can be too bright. These people go with a new pair of their favorite headphones with the stock cable and sell the silver cable headphones.

 

 

The first day with my new amp I really wanted to hear it at it's best and brought over my friends $500.00 pure silver RCA cables to hook between my Woo 5LE and the CD player.

 

 

 

 

 

My standard cables were Monster cables as I was not a cable believer yet and didn't think that the did anything. If there was a big difference from cables I wanted to hear it the first day with my new amp. The amp arrived and I tried both the Monster interconnects from the CD player to the RCA input of the Woo 5LE. I also demoed a pair of $500.00 pure silver interconnects which a favorite from a friend.

 

The silver cables were too bright sounding and the soundstage was very hard to understand. I went back to my standard $20 Monster cables for about a year, thinking that cables do change the sound but I had not found the perfect combo for my system. The silver cables were not warm like the Monster cables. I needed to find a nice pair of copper cables for my system to be dialed in, which I did. Silver can be perfect for dull sounding systems and too bright for treble high systems. Cables should be looked at as EQ systems. Some systems respond better than others.

 

Any normal mind would have to agree that there is something here, even if it's not always proved 100%. The best thing people say is that it's all mental. If it's all mental then why didn't I love the sound of the $500.00 RCA cables? I loved the sound of the Monsters as they matched my system the best at the time. 


Edited by Redcarmoose - 9/25/11 at 6:21pm
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post #63 of 244
9/25/11 at 11:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MaciekN View Post

EDIT: I didn't notice few posts before and firther explanation on McGurk but the question remains the same, what actually makes the brain hear differences. It is not belief (at least I don't think so) because many poeple who are sceptic would hear "properly". Did anyone actually resarch it?


Now that's a good question and one which at this time science only has a partial answer for. There has been a great deal of research in this area and the research is ongoing. Neuroscience has looked at this area and of course psychoacoustics is specifically the study of the perception of sound. What seems to happen is that the brain discards the vast majority of all it's sensory input (estimates puts the figure at about 90%), the brain would need to be approximately 5 times bigger than it is to process all the information it receives. The highly simplified data which remains is little more than a set of "patterns" which is "matched" (processed) using memory/experience to construct a "picture" of the world. This "pattern matching" explains why our senses can be fooled with aural and visual illusions, the brain is filling in the blanks. Your hearing is no different to the hearing of a great mastering engineer, the only difference is the mastering engineer has trained himself to discard less of the information and perceive more detail.

So what we hear is not based purely on what enters our ears but on all our senses, mixed in with all our emotions and experience of the world. This last part cannot be underestimated, it explains all the biases we exhibit and indeed even how we can perceive music. It's not so much what we hear but our cultural background which enables us to perceive music and harmony. It's the lack of understanding of how we perceive sound and music which often leads some audiophiles in the wrong direction. Trying to find an audio system which can reproduce the sound of a live concert is an impossibility because what we perceive when we go to a live concert is only partly dictated by the sound waves we hear. When we listen to cables, all that's needed for us to hear a difference is the belief that something has changed. If we see or know that a cable has been changed our brains "pattern match" and fill in the blanks. As has been tested on a number of occasions, the cables don't even need to be changed for a cable believer to hear a difference, just the belief the cable has been changed is enough.

This is a fascinating and complex area and not all the details of how the brain accomplishes perception are fully understood. To use a computer analogy: Modern computers have more raw processing capability than the human brain but the software which enables us to make sense of the world around us is many orders of magnitude more sophisticated than anything a computer is currently capable of.

Not sure I've explained all this very well, I'm trying, in a couple of paragraphs, to condense and explain what I've learnt in my 30 years experience of studying and applying the perception of sound.

G
Edited by gregorio - 9/25/11 at 11:19pm
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post #64 of 244
9/26/11 at 12:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redcarmoose View Post

I guess you have not read enough to really understand what folks are believing....

 

...The silver cables were not warm like the Monster cables. I needed to find a nice pair of copper cables for my system to be dialed in, which I did. Silver can be perfect for dull sounding systems and too bright for treble high systems. Cables should be looked at as EQ systems. Some systems respond better than others.


Any normal mind would have to agree that there is something here, even if it's not always proved 100%.


Do different metals, say silver or gold change the sound to a perceivable level? Absolutely! Silver creates a brighter sound compared to say gold which produces a warmer sound. This is a well known fact which has been understood and employed as a kind of EQ by generations of professional brass players, flute players and instrument manufacturers. Even just plating or lacquering brass with these different metals creates different absorption characteristics and different resonant frequencies which are all measurably within the capabilities of the human ear to perceive.

The problem though, is that this fact has nothing whatsoever to do with cables, as cables do not transmit sound! Absorption characteristics and resonant frequencies are completely irrelevant when it comes to cables because the only thing travelling through a cable is an electrical current, not sound. When transmitting an electrical current, capacitance and resistance are the important factors. Whereas capacitance and resistance is completely irrelevant to a brass instrument. The difference in capacitance and resistance of the various metals used in cables are so vanishingly small that the resultant alteration of the electrical current when converted to sound is orders of magnitude below what the human ear can hear. Cables are not "EQ systems" any EQ which may be occurring is in your brain, it's certainly not being heard by your ears.

Any normal mind with a basic understanding of the concept of analogue sound (electricity as opposed to sound) would agree the only thing here is bias. To say "there is something here, even if it's not always proved 100%" is a complete distortion of the facts. Despite many DBTs audible differences between cables hasn't been proved to even 1%! All the evidence so far is 100% in favour of the "something here" being nothing more than bias!

I'm afraid writing in big red letters is not going to make your distorted assertions any more true.

G
Edited by gregorio - 9/26/11 at 12:35am
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post #65 of 244
9/26/11 at 4:33am
.............And I thought everyone was entitled to their opinion here...........guess I was mistaken......
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post #66 of 244
9/26/11 at 4:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris J View Post

.............And I thought everyone was entitled to their opinion here...........guess I was mistaken......


You are, just not in the science forum. People want cold, hard facts here. I hear a difference is not a fact. 

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post #67 of 244
9/26/11 at 9:15am

Basically, I am all done with the back and forth of wearing out my keyboard keys trying to run my findings across someone who believes they are a total expert and gets some kind of gratification by showing the world how totally smart they are. I have to say I'm the worlds best crack-pot science believer. So you could say I'm the perfect one for making my point in colored letters and I really do have a lot of unproven scientific beliefs, cables being one of them. The reason I post is to maybe help others to at least try some different stuff in their system and try new things. Some times things make a difference and sometimes they don't. Science cold and hard has given us many gifts and made a grand improvement in our lives, on this same note having an open mind is the only true way leading to experiment through trial and error. I would feel sad to learn that many folks only read the opinions of some and don't at the least try things with an open mind, as to only believe what we are told to believe is the first step to true enslavement. 


Edited by Redcarmoose - 9/26/11 at 9:30am
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post #68 of 244
9/26/11 at 9:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tmars78 View Post





You are, just not in the science forum. People want cold, hard facts here. I hear a difference is not a fact. 


x2.

 

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post #69 of 244
9/26/11 at 10:07am

Wonderful post. Bravo.
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Redcarmoose View Post

Basically, I am all done with the back and forth of wearing out my keyboard keys trying to run my findings across someone who believes they are a total expert and gets some kind of gratification by showing the world how totally smart they are. I have to say I'm the worlds best crack-pot science believer. So you could say I'm the perfect one for making my point in colored letters and I really do have a lot of unproven scientific beliefs, cables being one of them. The reason I post is to maybe help others to at least try some different stuff in their system and try new things. Some times things make a difference and sometimes they don't. Science cold and hard has given us many gifts and made a grand improvement in our lives, on this same note having an open mind is the only true way leading to experiment through trial and error. I would feel sad to learn that many folks only read the opinions of some and don't at the least try things with an open mind, as to only believe what we are told to believe is the first step to true enslavement. 


 

 

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post #70 of 244
9/26/11 at 10:16am

 

I am just trying to suggest a bit more courtesy folks, this may be the science forum, but it is not a scientific journal.

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post #71 of 244
9/26/11 at 10:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris J View Post

I am just trying to suggest a bit more courtesy folks, this may be the science forum, but it is not a scientific journal.


No wonder I couldn't find the centerfold. biggrin.gif

 

se

 

 

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post #72 of 244
9/26/11 at 10:52am


Quote:

Originally Posted by Redcarmoose View Post

Basically, I am all done with the back and forth of wearing out my keyboard keys trying to run my findings across someone who believes they are a total expert and gets some kind of gratification by showing the world how totally smart they are. I have to say I'm the worlds best crack-pot science believer. So you could say I'm the perfect one for making my point in colored letters and I really do have a lot of unproven scientific beliefs, cables being one of them. The reason I post is to maybe help others to at least try some different stuff in their system and try new things. Some times things make a difference and sometimes they don't. Science cold and hard has given us many gifts and made a grand improvement in our lives, on this same note having an open mind is the only true way leading to experiment through trial and error. I would feel sad to learn that many folks only read the opinions of some and don't at the least try things with an open mind, as to only believe what we are told to believe is the first step to true enslavement. 


I think belief in crack pot science is a route to enslavement.

 

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post #73 of 244
9/26/11 at 11:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prog Rock Man View Post

I think belief in crack pot science is a route to enslavement.

 


x2

 

se

 

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post #74 of 244
9/26/11 at 11:58am


 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redcarmoose 

Basically, I am all done with the back and forth of wearing out my keyboard keys trying to run my findings across someone who believes they are a total expert and gets some kind of gratification by showing the world how totally smart they are. I have to say I'm the worlds best crack-pot science believer. So you could say I'm the perfect one for making my point in colored letters and I really do have a lot of unproven scientific beliefs, cables being one of them. The reason I post is to maybe help others to at least try some different stuff in their system and try new things. Some times things make a difference and sometimes they don't. Science cold and hard has given us many gifts and made a grand improvement in our lives, on this same note having an open mind is the only true way leading to experiment through trial and error. I would feel sad to learn that many folks only read the opinions of some and don't at the least try things with an open mind, as to only believe what we are told to believe is the first step to true enslavement. 

 

I dismiss cables by exactly the same mechanics I dismiss the idea that eating muffins improves the sound of my headphones. I do not believe I need to check that that is indeed the case for either. 
 

 

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post #75 of 244
9/26/11 at 12:10pm

I have an open mind to good science. It closes a bit with bad science. That is a very healthy place to be. It protects me from drivel.

 

Those who peddle psudeoscience are far more closed minded than good scientists. If you want proof of that, ask a psuedoscientist for properly reviewed and verifiable evidence and/or corroboration for their claims.

 

The day I look again with any seriousness at the pseudoscience of cables is when a reputable body such as a university backs up claims about sound or picture quality.

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Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Sound Science › Audiophile cables, an interesting question.