wow, some nice views here and a good mix as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wakibaki 
Right. Putting in 'how' makes all the difference.
You're not fooling anybody. A difference that makes no difference is no difference at all.
You cable guys...
w
this is a view i absolutely expected, but I'm not convinced there can be "no difference" but would like to be proven otherwise.
for example i would not expect a single hair thin strand of copper to have the same conductive, inductive and resistive properties as a 1,000 strand cable and i would really like to find out how those properties could affect the sound quality, and how many strands you need before the difference becomes inaudible.
similarly i would expect a 100 meter cable to have significantly more signal loss than a 1 meter long cable, again i would like to find out how that loss could affect the sound quality, whether it affects all frequencies similarly, if its logarithmic in its effect, or if it just affects the bass, mids or highs, and how long is "too long" for a headphone cable.
shielding is another thing i would like to examine, especially with high impedance headphones, i would imagine the higher current passing through the cable could (theoretically) cause more cross talk and interference between the left and right channels. again i expect it could only be measurable in 600ohm headphones and i doubt anyone would be able to consciously hear it, but it would be an interesting experiment.
what i would like is to test these theories and cables with a machine that passes a known signal, through a cable, and back into the machine, then compares the 2 signals looking for differences in the input and output such as signal loss, artifacts, inductance etc. so if anyone knows any machine that can do this please please message me!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
quick declaration of any bias i might have.
i have a small confession to make, i DO believe cables can make a difference from first hand experience. i bought a headphone to RCA cable a few years ago from an electrical store in the UK. it cost about £15 and was 1.5 meters in length. it wasn't a premium cable by any measure, but it was branded. 2 years later i needed an identical but longer 3 meter cable to replace it, so i bought one off eBay for about £2. it was unbranded, but looked to be slightly more substantial than others on eBay for around the same price point. the day it turned up i had been listening to my stereo for about 3 hours already, and i decided to change the cables over. i had completely forgotten that some people believe audio cables make a difference, so 20 seconds later when i plugged it in i heard an immediate difference, i was quite surprised, almost shocked. everything sounded better, and i had to A/B the 2 cables a few times to make sure i wasn't imagining it. (i know that's not reliable because its sighted, but i didn't expect a cheaper £2 unbranded cable off eBay to sound better than my £15 branded cable, and there was a definite difference!) needless to say, i buy all my cables off eBay now. 
i do not feel this makes my opinions biased as such, of course it may influence my own feelings and voicings, but as a scientist i really want to perform experiments, analyse the data and report my findings, no matter who they support. if anyone can help me on my little quest for the truth it would be muchly appreciated. I'm a huge fan of evidence, after all, i am a qualified forensic scientist!
