[gregorio]

I do not see where I claimed this semantic difference was of "little importance" when I rather meant the opposite, your hence arguing for a distinction and stance I already uphold.

I took it as the implication of these three assertions: “Unfortunate if there are still those who push the claim that cable believers literally "don't hear" what they hear” - If we define/include this semantic difference (by separating hearing from perceiving) then it’s not “unfortunate“, it’s entirely logical/reasonable to “push the claim that they literally don’t hear what they claim to hear” as they are perceiving a difference but not hearing a difference. Secondly, “You and others involved do hear (perceive) these differences, of course …” - Here you use the term “hear” to mean “perceive” (and then add “perceive” in parentheses). This implies that the term “hear” means both hearing and perceiving, requiring an addendum in parentheses to avoid confusion of which “hearing” you’re talking about. And lastly, “My goal is not to tell gear believers that they don't hear what they hear, but rather to evince that those differences are more likely psychological than physical, electrical, or acoustic in nature …” - This conflates hearing with perceiving, implying both are “hearing” but with different causes (real, physical acoustic differences or imaginary/psychological causes).

I accept that I may well have misinterpreted what you stated and in fact we’re on the same page. Although I still contend that using separate terms (“hearing” and “perceiving”) provides more clarity than using the same term (“hear”) and then having to qualify it, especially as so much audiophile marketing is reliant on confusing/conflating the two.

G

 

[MrHaelscheir]

I took it as the implication of these three assertions: “Unfortunate if there are still those who push the claim that cable believers literally "don't hear" what they hear” - If we define/include this semantic difference (by separating hearing from perceiving) then it’s not “unfortunate“, it’s entirely logical/reasonable to “push the claim that they literally don’t hear what they claim to hear” as they are perceiving a difference but not hearing a difference. Secondly, “You and others involved do hear (perceive) these differences, of course …” - Here you use the term “hear” to mean “perceive” (and then add “perceive” in parentheses). This implies that the term “hear” means both hearing and perceiving, requiring an addendum in parentheses to avoid confusion of which “hearing” you’re talking about. And lastly, “My goal is not to tell gear believers that they don't hear what they hear, but rather to evince that those differences are more likely psychological than physical, electrical, or acoustic in nature …” - This conflates hearing with perceiving, implying both are “hearing” but with different causes (real, physical acoustic differences or imaginary/psychological causes).

I accept that I may well have misinterpreted what you stated and in fact we’re on the same page. Although I still contend that using separate terms (“hearing” and “perceiving”) provides more clarity than using the same term (“hear”) and then having to qualify it, especially as so much audiophile marketing is reliant on confusing/conflating the two.

G

I see. At best, assume I was up to now using the term "hear" purely from what I believe to be the common meaning across most "audiophiles" mind humans, namely purely regarding their perception (my parenthesis was meant to equate the terms "hear" and "perceive" in that context") with complete disregard of the physical details. In that regard, part of my argument in favour of "clearer" distinguishing was in the sense of letting our interlocutors know what we each mean for the word "hear", whereby I had always assumed that saying "I hear something" implies saying "I have the auditory percept of" rather than being as pedantic as to say "Air vibrations of this quality are impinging on my eardrums". "Perceiving a difference without hearing a difference" would sound semantically odd to me when assuming common language rather than your strict definition for "hear" as a verb, or would also imply the ability to "hear" a difference (presenting signals with a 0.1 dB difference) while failing to perceive it, which to me sounds semantically weird. So my preferred semantic is that hearing as a verb implies perception (presentation of sound to the eardrum plus the mind consciously registering that event), whereby hearing in terms of just the actions of the physical mechanism should be explicitly described like so under the assumption that most do not use the verb that way. Consider also the semantics of saying, "I hear a voice in my head," or audiating music from memory. We would have to philosophize whether those internally and externally originating auditory percepts are separate percepts and so on.

 

[psy472]

Actually, I also realized a difference in audio quality with different cables, but it’s mostly an annoyance. For me a cable is good enough if they can isolate from external interference. The lack of clarity and dynamics can be tuned via my EQ gear and boosted by my amplifier. Which is why it’s much more worthwhile to buy expensive DAC/Amp/EQ gears than to buy wires. Now if you have too much money, then sure. I ran out of headphones and gear to buy (spent 8k USD for my setup) and so ended up buying a grand palladium cables for my headphones for 500 usd.

This audiophile thing is for people with money and a lot of free time. Even I am considered poor compared to the others on this forum. The hobby is for pleasure, just like how people buy an “ugly piece of art” for millions. This is my guilty pleasure and all satisfaction we get from it is ultimately an illusion. So same thing with expensive cables. They should get them studded with diamonds so we can double them as necklaces after using them with our IEMs and headphones.

 

[gregorio]

"Perceiving a difference without hearing a difference" would sound semantically odd to me when assuming common language rather than your strict definition for "hear" as a verb, or would also imply the ability to "hear" a difference (presenting signals with a 0.1 dB difference) while failing to perceive it, which to me sounds semantically weird.

I don’t disagree that audiophiles and indeed most of the public use the term “hear“ to mean hearing, perceiving or both in common parlance, or that it’s necessarily invalid to do so. I’m just stating that it’s also semantically valid to separate the terms “hear” and “perceive” and it’s especially important to do so in the audiophile world where this semantic difference is so exploited in order to mislead. It’s arguably similar to the use of the term “theory”, which in common parlance is synonymous with just “an idea” but means something significantly different in science.

Regarding the specific quote above, I can see how that might appear “semantically odd” to some/many people but arguably that’s a good thing, because it expresses an occurrence that while common, does indeed feel/appear odd. Experiencing something like the McGurk Effect (perceiving a difference without hearing a difference) does seem surprising/odd to many. The Stereo Effect is also “odd” if you think about it. We perceive a central sound source where there obviously isn’t one, the only reason this is not surprisingly odd is probably because we are so accustomed to it. Hearing something without perceiving it is also entirely common, it depends on how/where we focus our concentration and is why we have “listening skills” training. We can’t train our hearing but we can train what we perceive from what we’re hearing and, this is the reason why we have the different words/terms “hearing” and “listening”; the former is a passive physiological process (of our ears) while the latter is an active psychological process (of our brain).

This audiophile thing is for people with money and a lot of free time. Even I am considered poor compared to the others on this forum. The hobby is for pleasure, just like how people buy an “ugly piece of art” for millions.

Many people who “buy an ugly piece of art for millions” do so for the purpose of investment rather than because of any intrinsic beauty (or lack of it). Even when this isn’t the case, ugliness can be pleasurable/entertaining, this is true of all art forms and is why horror films are a popular genre. Even in music, ugliness has been deliberately employed for over 600 years. In fact the history of tonal music is effectively based on ugliness (dissonance), which is then resolved into beauty (consonance). I’m not sure this is anything “just like” what audiophiles do though. I‘m not sure anyone purchases audiophile equipment purely as an investment, it virtually always depreciates as far as I’m aware and while I’m sure many audiophiles buy audiophile equipment because of “brand name”, visual appearance or simply because it’s a high priced luxury item, extremely few, as far as I can tell, do so purely on that basis. Almost all seem to believe they are also purchasing at least some audible improvement.

G

 

[Merkurio]

I own otherwise identical Copper and Silver-plated Copper Meze cables for my Meze Liric and I can tell a huge difference between them. The copper brings out the lower-mids and sounds warmer, while the silver brings out more upper-detail and feels brighter. It's so much of a difference that I keep both cables on my desk and swap between them from time to time.

I apologize if I wasn't clear earlier, but my test indeed mirrors what I hear. I hear a slightly warmer sound with slightly less sparkle with copper (or, to speak the inverse, the silver is colder and has slightly more sparkle).

Classic example of audiophile delusion at its finest.

 

[psy472]

Classic example of audiophile delusion at its finest.

I agree. All of that could be fixed with some EQ gear like the Lokius from Schiit. The cables either bring more clarity and less distortions or it doesn’t. Unfortunately my stock cables can’t keep up with the amps I got so I had to upgrade.

 

[OCC7N]

Yes, it’s easy to tell a huge difference between them. To start with, they’re a difference price and a different colour.

If the copper brings out the mids and silver makes the sound brighter then it would be trivially easy to measure that “huge difference” in frequency response (and detail) but when measured that difference doesn’t exist. Have you done anything to control your listening and confirm an actual audible difference in sound/FR or is it just a simple case of the warmer colour of copper and brighter colour of silver biasing your perception to erroneously perceive warmer or brighter when in fact there’s no audible difference in FR?

G

I don’t know what your intentions are, but I am assuming you are just here to troll people and mislead them with facts you are limited to measure with your equipment.

I hope people will see your post patterns in this forum.

It has never in your life accured to you that the graphs and measurments you are looking at is 2D…

How would you measure layers, depth and holographic experience in Hz?

Im getting tired of your “actual facts” when you can’t even stand(measure) behind what you say.

I encourage people to stay open-minded and learn from their experience/placebo rather like you looking blind-minded on measurments that don’t even measure the human ear perception

 

[Merkurio]

I agree. All of that could be fixed with some EQ gear like the Lokius from Schiit. The cables either bring more clarity and less distortions or it doesn’t. Unfortunately my stock cables can’t keep up with the amps I got so I had to upgrade.

In my experience, cables either carry the analog signal satisfactorily (with all their bells and whistles) or they just don't work.

The only likely way that there is an audible difference within the gauge and length limits of a conventional headphone cable is that there is an internal resistance within the cable itself (something that visually may be evident) that causes an interaction with the variable impedance curve of a headphone, something extremely unlikely.

 

[Merkurio]

I don’t know what your intentions are, but I am assuming you are just here to troll people and mislead them with facts you are limited to measure with your equipment.

I hope people will see your post patterns in this forum.

It has never in your life accured to you that the graphs and measurments you are looking at is 2D…

How would you measure layers, depth and holographic experience in Hz?

Im getting tired of your “actual facts” when you can’t even stand(measure) behind what you say.

I encourage people to stay open-minded and learn from their experience/placebo rather like you looking blind-minded on measurments that don’t even measure the human ear perception

That's the secret captain, you don't.

What makes me laugh is that you move the goalposts by introducing psychoacoustic aspects that have more to do with the tonal response of the headphone and our stimulus to it, than with what is being discussed in the thread and the specific part you quote from gregorio's post (the simple operation of a cable and its null relationship affecting the final FR). And worst of all, doing it in an audio science subforum, without any admonishment.

As gregorio has rightly said throughout the thread, the same stupid fallacies and personal accommodation of reality that have polluted this hobby for decades now, I guess to feel good about yourself and the decisions you have made so far.

I think it's easier for our brains to shield our ego from the fact that we've lived in deception for so long instead of acknowledge the mistake, learn, and gain a new perspective. That takes courage and a hunger for genuine knowledge.

 

[OCC7N]

That's the secret captain, you don't.

What makes me laugh is that you move the goalposts by introducing psychoacoustic aspects that have more to do with the tonal response of the headphone and our stimulus to it, than with what is being discussed in the thread and the specific part you quote from gregorio's post (the simple operation of a cable and its null relationship affecting the final FR). And worst of all, doing it in an audio science subforum, without any admonishment.

As gregorio has rightly said throughout the thread, the same stupid fallacies and personal accommodation of reality that have polluted this hobby for decades now, I guess to feel good about yourself and the decisions you have made so far.

I think it's easier for our brains to shield our ego from the fact that we've lived in deception for so long instead of acknowledge the mistake, learn, and gain a new perspective. That takes courage and a hunger for genuine knowledge.

What a bunch of smart words huh?

Your last phrase is laughable. Anybody that has been in this hobby a couple of months knows how blind-minded that sounds.

Nobody in this hobby is afraid, to acknowledge the mistakes. Typical assumptions and patterns, from measurments experts.

“You are all deceived, you can not hear it, because I can not read/measure” it type of guy

You just like to talk smart words without any real weight to them.

 

[MrHaelscheir]

I don’t know what your intentions are, but I am assuming you are just here to troll people and mislead them with facts you are limited to measure with your equipment.

I hope people will see your post patterns in this forum.

It has never in your life accured to you that the graphs and measurments you are looking at is 2D…

How would you measure layers, depth and holographic experience in Hz?

Im getting tired of your “actual facts” when you can’t even stand(measure) behind what you say.

I encourage people to stay open-minded and learn from their experience/placebo rather like you looking blind-minded on measurments that don’t even measure the human ear perception

The intention is to reveal why perceived changes are most likely psychological in origin rather than being caused by actual changes to the signal done by the cable. As for tjkohli, the simple matter is that they claimed to hear "huge" differences and measured potentially tester-error-related differences on the order of 1 dB that run contrary to the original claims of "huge" differences.

Regarding your description of measurements as "2D" and how "layers" would be measured, I would argue that "layering" (that which is objectively mixed or recorded into being) is entirely within the recording or possibly through some additional DSP one may apply, its being related to crossfeed, volume, timbre, and phase cues as then interact with the rest of the system, primarily the transducer and your ears, then whatever your mind may do with that information in the presence of other factors ("adding" or "removing" layering cues). I know how to measurably and reliably employ DSP to project the soundstage a meter or so in front of me for convincing speaker imaging you can rotate your head within; a cable isn't going to do that. I can also measurably use DSP to convincingly image panned sources a meter to the left and right of my head instead of coming just from the drivers. That stuff requires HRTF measurements and specialized real-time EQ, phase, and crossfeed manipulations.

Otherwise, tell me what you believe "sound", the sound that reaches your eardrums, no further downstream, to be. As a starter, is it anything more than air vibrations that can be (demonstrably with signal processing) decomposed into a host of sinusoids of differing and changing frequency, amplitude, and phase? Given that, what do you think the measurements in my own video (post #345) suggest about the actual difference between these cables? I purchased these "upgrade" cables simply since I wanted nice 4.4 mm balanced cables, whereby my measurements only confirmed my personal failure to hear significant differences.

Now, would you agree that there is probably a confusion regarding the term "hear" between the cable believers and non-believers in this thread and many others like it, as dissected in my preceding discussion with gregorio? Anyways, rest assured that at least I would never tell you or another cable believer that "You don't/can't hear differences between cables" because I assume "hear" to be understood by most as referring to the perceived sound, which can be influenced by many factors other than the actual audio signal; I would only challenge the cause of those perceived differences as likely not being electrical or acoustic in origin.

 

[Merkurio]

What a bunch of smart words huh?

Your last phrase is laughable. Anybody that has been in this hobby a couple of months knows how blind-minded that sounds.

Nobody in this hobby is afraid, to acknowledge the mistakes. Typical assumptions and patterns, from measurments experts.

“You are all deceived, you can not hear it, because I can not read/measure” it type of guy

You just like to talk smart words without any real weight to them.

Nobody? You and everyone who has felt offended in this thread by the way the distinction between "hearing" and "perceiving" was made are the first ones to not recognize something incredibly basic, LOL.

On top of that, you adopt a cocky attitude as ambassadors of audiophile BS ("have an open mind and listen to your placebo", LOL) in a science-oriented subforum where factual arguments are the main driving force, not feelings. The joke tells itself.

Next time, try convincing communities of astronomers and geophysicists that the Earth is flat, or biologists, paleontologists, geneticists, and other scientists in the biological sciences to have an open mind towards creationism. Let's see if playing the same victim card helps you then.

 

[Merkurio]

The intention is to reveal why perceived changes are most likely psychological in origin rather than being caused by actual changes to the signal done by the cable. As for tjkohli, the simple matter is that they claimed to hear "huge" differences and measured potentially tester-error-related differences on the order of 1 dB that run contrary to the original claims of "huge" differences.

Regarding your description of measurements as "2D" and how "layers" would be measured, I would argue that "layering" (that which is objectively mixed or recorded into being) is entirely within the recording or possibly through some additional DSP one may apply, its being related to crossfeed, volume, timbre, and phase cues as then interact with the rest of the system, primarily the transducer and your ears, then whatever your mind may do with that information in the presence of other factors ("adding" or "removing" layering cues). I know how to measurably and reliably employ DSP to project the soundstage a meter or so in front of me for convincing speaker imaging you can rotate your head within; a cable isn't going to do that. I can also measurably use DSP to convincingly image panned sources a meter to the left and right of my head instead of coming just from the drivers. That stuff requires HRTF measurements and specialized real-time EQ, phase, and crossfeed manipulations.

Otherwise, tell me what you believe "sound", the sound that reaches your eardrums, no further downstream, to be. As a starter, is it anything more than air vibrations that can be (demonstrably with signal processing) decomposed into a host of sinusoids of differing and changing frequency, amplitude, and phase? Given that, what do you think the measurements in my own video (post #345) suggest about the actual difference between these cables? I purchased these "upgrade" cables simply since I wanted nice 4.4 mm balanced cables, whereby my measurements only confirmed my personal failure to hear significant differences.

Now, would you agree that there is probably a confusion regarding the term "hear" between the cable believers and non-believers in this thread and many others like it, as dissected in my preceding discussion with gregorio? Anyways, rest assured that at least I would never tell you or another cable believer that "You don't/can't hear differences between cables" because I assume "hear" to be understood by most as referring to the perceived sound, which can be influenced by many factors other than the actual audio signal; I would only challenge the cause of those perceived differences as likely not being electrical or acoustic in origin.

I admire the patience with which you are able to attempt reasoning with people who clearly have no intention of doing so, because it is impossible to read your message with a mind open to learning and not understand what you are saying (or what others like Gregorio, Bigshot, or Castleofargh have said throughout these 25 pages).

I even believe that the famous six-year-old daughter mentioned in the thread would be able to understand it better than many "open-minded audiophiles" (or rather, trolls who roam freely in this subforum without any consequences, something that would not be allowed in other Head-Fi subforums if it were the other way around).

 

[KinGensai]

It has never in your life accured to you that the graphs and measurments you are looking at is 2D…

How would you measure layers, depth and holographic experience in Hz?

You are being led by your very heavy bias to strawman the "opposing side" here. Nevermind the rather obvious tribalism being displayed here, it has occured to me that perhaps there are metrics besides FR graphs that completely define the objectively quantifiable analog signal being sent to our ears, things like Impulse Response, total harmonic distortion, sound pressure level, etc that further denotes the quality of the analog signal. The difference between an all BA IEM and a DD IEM's bass response is an example of this, where some added impulse response, THD and SPL and reduced odd order harmonics makes the experience of the bass more "natural in timbre" or whatever despite the analog signal objectively being degraded compared to the digital signal more than a well implemented Bass BA array.

What happens beyond that can not be quantified just yet, as the measurement metrics are too crude to resolve the actual cognitive mechanics at work.

Some folks want to understand what exactly is going on with things we like. It's not necessary, but neither is much of the crap being sold to audiophiles.

 

[MrHaelscheir]

You are being led by your very heavy bias to strawman the "opposing side" here. Nevermind the rather obvious tribalism being displayed here, it has occured to me that perhaps there are metrics besides FR graphs that completely define the objectively quantifiable analog signal being sent to our ears, things like Impulse Response, total harmonic distortion, sound pressure level, etc that further denotes the quality of the analog signal. The difference between an all BA IEM and a DD IEM's bass response is an example of this, where some added impulse response, THD and SPL and reduced odd order harmonics makes the experience of the bass more "natural in timbre" or whatever despite the analog signal objectively being degraded compared to the digital signal more than a well implemented Bass BA array.

What happens beyond that can not be quantified just yet, as the measurement metrics are too crude to resolve the actual cognitive mechanics at work.

Some folks want to understand what exactly is going on with things we like. It's not necessary, but neither is much of the crap being sold to audiophiles.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/hifiman-he1000-se.886228/page-320 is an example of a place where I noted the importance of also taking into account the phase response of headphones which together with the magnitude response will yield the impulse and step responses, such measurements revealing an objective measure of differences in transient sharpness between headphones. At the same time, these measurements showed extensive similarities between the HE1000se and Arya Stealth suggesting that most perceptions of vast improvements (e.g. "a lot more" bass or "impact") are likely hype influenced by non-volume-matched impressions and other biases (e.g. the HE1000se over a balanced connection will play around 1 to 2 dB louder than the Arya Stealth), I myself in volume-matched listening perceiving no day and night advantages. I otherwise can appreciate the HE1000se's looks, build, and objectively better distortion performance, though still not at the level of my Meze Elite.

If we instead want to dissect the art of how audio manufacturers mold perception to their will and create differences beyond what can be measured, I guess the only secret is marketing.

Anyways, if both the magnitude and phase response of a cable as measured at the ear canal are virtually identical (which is the case from the measurements in my video), then it should be impossible for the audio signal passed through to itself be responsible for perceived chances in tonality or transient quality, pointing the causality elsewhere such as other psychological influences.