[Slackboy72]

Cables CAN make a difference but it's not just their quality, it's their length too.
Anyone who thinks that a $200 1 foot cable is having a positive effect on their sound is deluding themselves.

Harmony Central - The Truth About Guitar Cords

 

[JazzVinyl]

The author of "10 Lies" has never heard a good turntable playing a nice clean well recorded LP. He has never heard a quality tube headphone amp on a quality pair of cans. Etc etc etc...

He listens to his close-n-play 'record player' and his panasonic table radio and figures he is at the top of the aural food chain.

I know a million of 'em who can't tell a trumpet from a scalded ducks' squawk.

Now if he had jumped on the "$170.00 AC Cords they sell"...

...

 

[Cyphir]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JazzVinyl /img/forum/go_quote.gif The author of "10 Lies" has never heard a good turntable playing a nice clean well recorded LP. He has never heard a quality tube headphone amp on a quality pair of cans. Etc etc etc... He listens to his close-n-play 'record player' and his panasonic table radio and figures he is at the top of the aural food chain. I know a million of 'em who can't tell a trumpet from a scalded ducks' squawk. Now if he had jumped on the "$170.00 AC Cords they sell"... ...

Baseless bashing isn't exactly helping your cause either. Just reinforcing the stereotype that audiophiles are deluded elitist pricks.

 

[Raez]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slackboy72 /img/forum/go_quote.gif And it's not just your opinion in some countries. False advertising is a serious offence in Australia and many people have been dragged through the courts by our consumer watchdog not just for false advertising but also misleading advertising.

Yep. I can't wait 'till the day that happens to the audiophile cable industry in America. I bet people will still believe in them then though. Gah.

 

[Catharsis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aristos_achaion /img/forum/go_quote.gif Oh, come along...you really don't think science requires faith? For starters, we've got faith in our senses to tell us the truth...go back to the Middle Ages, and that was a radical idea. You've got to have faith that what works today and worked yesterday will continue to work tomorrow, that things don't miraculously change without cause...something we take for granted, but there's nothing saying it won't, other than our previous experience. Even more than that, often people just accept anything with the "science" label on it as valid without even critiquing the methodologies used to get the results or the validity of drawing the conclusions that were drawn from those results. Oddly enough, I'm not talking about climate science (I work for climate scientists...I can attest that their code, while hard to maintain, isn't fundamentally flawed). What concerns me more are people who'll blindly say "studies have shown [for instance] that University X is one of the most diverse in the country". When you ask what studies, what their methodology was, and what "diverse" even means, they get all defensive and unhappy. Point being, I'd wager most "scientific" knowledge in this world is taken on faith by most of the people who know it. Not that there's anything wrong with that...there's not enough time in the day to recreate all the experiments your knowledge is based on. Just don't start knocking faith.

And yet can you think of a better way to empirically test our environment? I suppose you think concepts like gravity and electromagnetism are just delusions of our senses?

I love how people love to tell us that the scientific methodology is flawed, and yet fail to provide a more critical way of accumulating knowledge about the world we live in.

I tell you what, go outside and drop a penny off your balcony. I can gurantee you it will fall towards your feet.

This is the sound science forum is it not?

 

[Catharsis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by haloxt /img/forum/go_quote.gif There's many people who think cables make a difference, even your HD800 has SPC headphone cable, so no matter how much you people dismiss it, I won't give you any credence until you do a real study that takes into consideration the difficulty of testing any human sensory reactions. Neither do I think proving cables equates "disproving 100 years of science". There's many possibilities other than those 3 you mention, such as cable induced jitter, vibration or emi/rfi. Also I don't get why you can't stop talking about cable manufacturer profiteering. I don't care about that when the question is scientifically ascertaining the truth of whether cable differences are truly audible.

1) It is not difficult to test cables using DBT - regardless of whether you're evaluating human perception or not. The cable is the variable we're interested in here, not how astute one's senses are.

2) Oh sure...there are ALL KINDS of possibilities that could make a cable sound different. Unfortunately the brightest minds on the planet have not been able to prove that they exist. The burden of proof is on believers, and so far y'all been doing a pretty piss-poor job at it. "Just believe my ears" is the best you can come up with. Speaking of which....I just levitated this morning for the 3rd time in a row.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Both sides of the argument should take on 'the burden of proof'. That way we all have a better chance of figuring out what is right and what is wrong and what we are always likely to be unsure about. The real problem is the way these debates are conducted, particularly on open forums.

Does anyone know of a proper on line discussion with reasoning, evidence and no name calling/slagging?

 

[haloxt]

Prog rock man is correct, both sides are just as obligated to get to the bottom of the issue. I diss anti-cablers for not doing what I consider to be scientific tests, but I think pro-cablers are equally guilty of such laziness. The difference is anti-cablers whine a lot. If you want an online discussion on controversial topics without people grunting like monkeys, I've found just about everywhere is better than this particular forum.

 

[anetode]

It's the extraordinary claims that require extraordinary proof, not the basic ones supported by the established practices of audio engineering.

And haloxt, you diss anti-cablers 'cause you're a prick. Likewise, I diss the opposing camp because I'm a prick. (Polite, considerate people don't diss, nor even think to) The difference is, I hold my biases to scientific scrutiny and despise the entitlement of clinging to knowledge gained by personal experience as if it were some gnostic insight. There's this funny pretense among audiophiles that those who don't "get it" are incapable of understanding.

 

[Catharsis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by anetode /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's the extraordinary claims that require extraordinary proof, not the basic ones supported by the established practices of audio engineering. And haloxt, you diss anti-cablers 'cause you're a prick. Likewise, I diss the opposing camp because I'm a prick. (Polite, considerate people don't diss, nor even think to) The difference is, I hold my biases to scientific scrutiny and despise the entitlement of clinging to knowledge gained by personal experience as if it were some gnostic insight. There's this funny pretense among audiophiles that those who don't "get it" are incapable of understanding.

That was a well-said synopsis of how I feel. Glad to know I'm not alone.

 

[ib1dance]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shike /img/forum/go_quote.gif The people that need to bring burden of proof are the believers. We say gravity exists, you say prove it, we do. You say cables make a difference, we say prove it, you stutter.

I bought a 1 metre length of 'moon cable' that a guy sold me from Ebay.Moon dust particles had been woven into the wire and I can honestly say the sound improvement is out of this world.

 

[BIG POPPA]

We should figure out these questions at mini meets?

 

[Catharsis]

Has it been diluted to this?

No science can stand against the poetic rhetoric of the believers. No capacitance, inductance, resistance, logic or empirical evidence dare shed its presence on the almighty ambiguity of bull.

Nay, no words can express that which is shattered by the perfect ears of the common head-fier. May I beg for forgiveness.

 

[TheBigCW]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aristos_achaion /img/forum/go_quote.gif Oh, come along...you really don't think science requires faith? For starters, we've got faith in our senses to tell us the truth...go back to the Middle Ages, and that was a radical idea. You've got to have faith that what works today and worked yesterday will continue to work tomorrow, that things don't miraculously change without cause...something we take for granted, but there's nothing saying it won't, other than our previous experience.

Nope, I don't. I don't need faith, I don't want faith, and furthermore I don't have faith. Faith is an excuse for a lack of reason. If you have logic, you don't need faith. If you have reasoned analysis and deductive reasoning, there's no need for it.

 

[jax]

I've read this guys stuff before, and took no pleasure in being reminded of his writing. He strikes me as acerbic, cantankerous bore, who is no better than the critics he so harshly criticizes. If you read a few reviews of some of the components themselves that you might be familiar with you might get a different sense of where he's coming from. In one issue there is a review of Grado 125's, as an example that may be familiar to some. I find him very limited in his observations, and as someone who seems to want to place everything into a compartment where it neatly fits. Things are black or white, bad or good. Sorry, but in my experience the world doesn't work that way. There's an entire rainbow of colors in between and I would rather not live a life, nor have a mindset that fits neatly into compartments. Humans have an inescapable drive to make meaning of everything around them. To me, the extreme of this is to live a life without an emotion or compassion at all....like a Vulcan for you Star Trek fans (I am not so forgive my inaccuracy if I'm off base here). I can't speak for others, but the joy I get in life has more to do with being open to possibilities that are not necessarily in the realms of logic or reason. The best things in my life have come from some kind of leap of faith....driven by a gut instinct and or blind passion. That is not to say I abandoned reason all together in those cases, but I've found there are times for both.

One need only read the forums here, over at Audiogon, Audioasylum, or any number of sites where things like this are discussed. You will see there are scores of folks getting great enjoyment in their lives from bringing music into their homes using the technologies being discussed, and those being harshly criticized in this article. Proving they are "wrong" to have that experience by logic, reason, graphs on paper, or someone else's knee-jerk criticism of the industry and of capitalism in general.....well, I just don't see the point. Go listen to the stuff yourself and make your own decisions....enjoy the music above all...enjoy life!

I heard a hilarious line in an otherwise just OK movie recently. It comes to mind when reading this guys criticisms:

Quote:

I think you're constipated, in your f*©king soul... I think you might have a really big load of grumpy petrified poop up your soul's ass.