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Why pick on cables ? - Page 14  

post #196 of 403
9/6/12 at 8:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by OJNeg View Post

 

Off topic, but are people actually able to differentiate between different water bottle brands? Is there even a measurable difference to how they treat the water at all? Or is it another case of price-tag/brand name placebo?

off topic... but i can distinguish between different bottled water

bottled water is inferior to canadian tap water imho

 

 

all this double blind testing stuff is like statistics all over again haha

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post #197 of 403
9/6/12 at 8:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ultrabike View Post

I have heard music through a variety of USB, speaker wire (14-16 AWG < 6 meters roughly) and RCA cables of varying lengths, brand, and prices. Did not hear a difference all else the same. That said, if there was poor contact I heard a difference: No signal. Same could be said about cables for video.

 

As far as headphones, I have tried a variety of them, and the differences in sound quality were relatively obvious.

 

The fact that I heard no difference across different cables and the fact that I see high prices on cables that made no audible difference to me (i.e. Monster at my bro's house) makes me a bit critical of them. Furthermore, I have a feel for how much capacity some cables have, and that makes me even more critical of them... compared to other components of a sound reproduction rig. 

 

I did hear thumping and cracking through some headphone cables when running or when tapping them though: microphonics. But that's about it as far as I can think...

Comparing 16 gauge speaker cable could be taxing. Most high quality speaker cable is larger than 16G. Comparing typical Monster brand interconnects versus stock zip cord also could yield small results. I think for people who listen to headphones as much as the folks here, alot of the goals of getting better cable are not required...after all, the cans have their own connector and cord..plugged directly into the source or headphone amp. Not alot of changes to be made, except the interconnects from the preamp to the headphone amp.

post #198 of 403
9/6/12 at 9:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by fuzzyash View Post

off topic... but i can distinguish between different bottled water

bottled water is inferior to canadian tap water imho

 

 

all this double blind testing stuff is like statistics all over again haha

There you go! biggrin.gif When I was a kid, selling bottled water seemed like a ridiculous idea, now it is a matter of taste and preference I guess. 

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by jvandyk View Post

Comparing 16 gauge speaker cable could be taxing. Most high quality speaker cable is larger than 16G. Comparing typical Monster brand interconnects versus stock zip cord also could yield small results. I think for people who listen to headphones as much as the folks here, alot of the goals of getting better cable are not required...after all, the cans have their own connector and cord..plugged directly into the source or headphone amp. Not alot of changes to be made, except the interconnects from the preamp to the headphone amp.

Why would the interconnects from the preamp to the headphone amp make a difference relative to other interconnects?

post #199 of 403
9/6/12 at 9:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jvandyk View Post

It is maybe the single best improvement I made to my system in the past 10 years..

No equalization or room treatment, eh?
Edited by bigshot - 9/6/12 at 1:10pm
post #200 of 403
9/6/12 at 12:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bigshot View Post


No equalization or room treatmen, eh?

My main speakers are set-up well in their spaces. Takes a long time with bi-polar speakers. Equalization always sounds like crud to me. Just another layer of electronics on the sound. Even worse if it's in the digital domain. Good room treatments and speaker placement are important though like you said. A properly set up system shouldn't need equalization...unless you've got a really problematic listening room.

post #201 of 403
9/6/12 at 12:20pm

Digital and analog equalization can make a huge difference, and because of this it can either significantly improve your rig, or turn it into a horrible mess. It is therefore important to use a decent one, and to learn how to properly use it.

 

If you hear differences between cables then you are sort of applying equalization through them...

 

What equalizers did you use that made you shy away from them dude?

post #202 of 403
9/6/12 at 1:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jvandyk View Post

A properly set up system shouldn't need equalization...unless you've got a really problematic listening room.

I suppose if you live in an anechoic chamber. I have yet to find a speaker setup that didn't benefit tremendously from careful equalization. I think if you tried it, you'd find that your "biggest sound quality improvement in ten years" would get left in the dust.
post #203 of 403
9/6/12 at 1:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ultrabike View Post

 

Even if you lead the horse to water, marketing always finds a way:

https://www.blingh2o.com/store/index.php

http://www.aquamaestro.com/step1.asp

 

 

Hold on....I'm thinking of an Ice Cube angle on this... maybe water that freezes at 38°F?

Or maybe water that remains liquid down to 0°F?

 

ah, it's no use as the blatant violation of the laws of physical property/phase change would never allow us to get away with such nonsense...or would it?  haha

 

 

PT Barnum strikes again!


Edited by Sandman65 - 9/6/12 at 1:45pm
post #204 of 403
9/6/12 at 1:50pm

This way to the great egress. 

post #205 of 403
9/6/12 at 2:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sandman65 View Post

 

 

Hold on....I'm thinking of an Ice Cube angle on this... maybe water that freezes at 38°F?

Or maybe water that remains liquid down to 0°F?

 

ah, it's no use as the blatant violation of the laws of physical property/phase change would never allow us to get away with such nonsense...or would it?  haha

 

 

PT Barnum strikes again!

 

just add salt and sell it for $100 a bottle... It'll taste different too. biggrin.gif

 

Regarding cables, I feel people don't necessarily "pick" on them per say. People pick on wild marketing claims, and overblown prices... and therefore become somewhat critical of audiophile cables as a result. Good information on how cables can affect things and how to choose among them is available. I found these articles useful when picking among them:

 

http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/speaker-cable-gauge

http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/top-ten-signs-an-audio-cable-vendor-is-selling-you-snake-oil

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-sDemU6nctvW/learn/learningcenter/home/speakers_wire.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_wire


Edited by ultrabike - 9/6/12 at 2:25pm
post #206 of 403
9/6/12 at 2:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeaj View Post

Woah, wait a second.

In medicine and many other fields, you're looking at unclear paths of cause and effect.  You have to be very careful about which factors are caused by each other, which are just correlated for other reasons, what some kind of confounding factors affecting multiple other things are, and so on.


Here, we have a situation where if one cable hypothetically delivers the same signal (same voltage and current at each time instance) as another, the acoustic response of the system will be indentical.  (Or do you suggest that there is another avenue of "information" being sent that would cause the sound produced to be different?)  In practice, you can measure this signal with one cable and another to verify how close the electrical signals are to being identical.  You can also measure the acoustic outputs, though with lesser accuracy and precision (still beats human hearing).  This is not some unknown black box.  We know pretty well the mechanism behind the operation of the system from an electrical point of view—and to a reasonably good degree for the psychoacoustic aspects as well.

No, it really is quite similar.

We can take direct measurement on nasal passage caliber with acoustic rhinometry, measure inhalation peak flow, rise time and volume over time. We have plenty of direct surrogate measures. We don't measure these typically because we care more about symptomology (e.g. Relief of congestion, relief of runny or itchy nose by patient perception). Ultimately, that is what medically matters and not the change in nasal passage caliber.

The situation is very similar to listener perceptions vs. cable direct measures. We are not proving electrical performance differences. we are looking at changes in listener perception differences and separate them from placebo. Perceptions about allergies and rhinitis are actually quite similar.

:-)
post #207 of 403
9/6/12 at 2:44pm

Quote:
We are not proving electrical performance differences. we are looking at changes in listener perception differences and separate them from placebo.

 

 

 

So you think there is something about a cable other than electrical performance that can change listener perception but is not placebo/psychoacoustic? If the electrical signal is the same, then it affects the system and the sound it produces the same. That's the way it works. So what is this other thing that can affect listener perception and is not psychoacoustic/placebo? 


Edited by liamstrain - 9/6/12 at 2:47pm
post #208 of 403
9/6/12 at 2:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by iim7V7IM7 View Post


No, it really is quite similar.
We can take direct measurement on nasal passage caliber with acoustic rhinometry, measure inhalation peak flow, rise time and volume over time. We have plenty of direct surrogate measures. We don't measure these typically because we care more about symptomology (e.g. Relief of congestion, relief of runny or itchy nose by patient perception). Ultimately, that is what medically matters and not the change in nasal passage caliber.
The situation is very similar to listener perceptions vs. cable direct measures. We are not proving electrical performance differences. we are looking at changes in listener perception differences and separate them from placebo. Perceptions about allergies and rhinitis are actually quite similar.
:-)


I'm an EE so I can't say much about the medical field... but my father-in-law can. He is a retired medical doctor. He has told me more than once that certain things about the human body are not at all well understood (actually they are not understood at all.)

 

Cable seems a bit better understood in the sense that it is possible to predict performance and waveform integrity to very high accuracy. Listener perception is one thing, but if the waveform impinging the receiver (in this cause the human auditory system) did not change one bit from cable to cable, why conclude that the cable is at fault for perceptual differences?

 

AFAIK audio cables are electrical signal conductors whose function is to transfer electrical waveforms... That's it. Or does it do something else that produces a change in sound perception?


Edited by ultrabike - 9/6/12 at 3:00pm
post #209 of 403
9/6/12 at 2:57pm

some people simply don't accept that there are any thresholds, that psychoacoustic Science has anything to say - because "everything" can't currently be explained - obviously their perceptions are resolving features "unknown to Science" in that "knowledge gap"

 

but to maintain that position they have to find a way to discount Blind tests, deny the rest of perceptual psychology results on how much our brain manipulates our sensory input, how secondary, delayed, edited, reconstructed from memory our conscious perception of the world is

 

when it comes to cable effects on electrical signal in our audio systems they have no idea of the relative magnitudes, even the dimensions of Signal Theory descriptions of microphone bandwidth, noise, or headphone frequency response, distortion, repeatability compared to expected, measurable cable "flaws"


Edited by jcx - 9/6/12 at 3:02pm
post #210 of 403
9/6/12 at 3:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ultrabike View Post


I'm an EE so I can't say much about the medical field... but my father-in-law can. He is a retired medical doctor. He has told me more than once that certain things about the human body are not at all well understood (actually they are not understood at all.)

Cable seems a bit better understood in the sense that it is possible to predict performance and waveform integrity to very high accuracy. Listener perception is one thing, but if the waveform impinging the receiver (in this cause the human auditory system) did not change one bit from cable to cable, why conclude that the cable is at fault for perceptual differences?

AFAIK audio cables are electrical signal conductors whose function is to transfer electrical waveforms... That's it. Or does it do something else that produces a change in sound perception?

Are we talking about cable electrical quality attributes or how listeners perceive changes in sonic signature and imaging? What direct electrical measurement is associated in how large or deep you perceive a soundstage of a recording to be or instrument placement within it? You are trying to understand if perceived changes are real or not correct? Therefore you measure the output response directly. Electrical properties of cables are indeed well understood and so are many transducer output measurements. Forget that I am using a medical example. It is just a good vehicle to illustrate how vague and subtle changes are proven (or not most of the time). Science is science. This is a similar issue in my opinion.
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