[beeman458]

Shike wrote:
 
First, I'd appreciate you citing these peer reviewed medical studies you keep bringing up.
 
No, I'm not going do a full paper on what's common knowledge in the medical field.  Check out a few medical studies for your own personal edification.
 
As I wrote, try keeping responses short as I can't do ever lengthening tit-for-tat exchanges.
 
Prog Rock Man wrote:
 
But in the case of cables you claim to be able to hear a difference, but I say that it is you having sight of the cables, not hearing is what makes the difference. So I do a test where you cannot see the cables anymore to find out if you really can hear a difference, then my proof is correct.
 
It doesn't matter that a person can't see the cables.  The evaluation standards of plus seventy percent correct identification guarantees fail.  Human senses, when at the extremes of their abilities, might exhibit only ten or twenty percent accuracy before they fail completely.  When you set the bar so high, that it exceeds the rational analogue nature of the human sensory system to detect a difference, you guarantee the results will come back fail.  No where in the world is this standard accepted as rational work place conditions but some how this standard applies here.
 
What I find galling, is that you so called "sound science" types aren't calling people on this point.  It's common knowledge that humans have an analogue sensory system.  It's common knowledge that as the sensory system is stressed, the level of one hundred percent detection drops in an analogue fashion.  And it's also common knowledge that human detection ranges will dependably drop into the ten or twenty percent range before total fail occurs   And yet, with this as common knowledge and the fact that the bar is set unrealistically high, coupled with the fact that you guys don't call foul, shows that you're wanting fail to occur, thereby showing extreme prejudice of nature, or bias.  Talk about walking into a load of who-ie.
 
When you guys want to come up to where reality meets the road, then you'll have some play.  Until then, you're just a bunch of bias test givers who have some sort of pseudo science agenda going on to make you guys fell good about yourselves.
 
But hey, we'll always have beer.

 

[Spelaeus]

This has been mentioned before when medical studies were brought up, but you don't seem to understand statistical analysis. In the medical study scenario (which is kind of BS to begin with since you're not even citing a specific study but simply saying that it's "common knowledge" when your claims would actually require a specific study to refer to...), 20% or 30% efficacy is compared to 0% without treatment. That is *significant*. But when performing a DBT with two cables, your results should be compared to a 50% chance of being correct when guessing randomly. If you were right 20% or 30% of the time, you were doing worse than random guessing. In your cable scenario, all that 70% success requirement does is attempt to ensure that you weren't just guessing randomly and happened to do a little better than 50%.

 

[alexxfloo]

@beeman458 shouldn't you be beeRman458?

I think you often drink too much and fantasize about cables which seam to sound better

. And yeah it was a joke.

 

[beeman458]

But when performing a DBT with two cables, your results should be compared to a 50% chance of being correct when guessing randomly.
 
If you're calling the flipping of coins, but we're not flipping coins, we're dealing with human's sensory system which everybody knows, declines in it's ability as more and more demands are made on it until even ten or twenty percent is unobtainable.
 
If you were right 20% or 30% of the time, you were doing worse than random guessing.
 
No.  What's happening is that the sensory system is reaching the end of it's analogue abilities.
 
In your cable scenario, all that 70% success requirement does is attempt to ensure that you weren't just guessing randomly and happened to do a little better than 50%.
 
We're talking an arbitrary number of convenience that serves a bias position, that fails in it's nature to take into consideration the nature of the human sensory system and how it works, assuring fail.  Even human intelligence is assigned a bell curve, yet we all know degree'd people who are dumb as nails.
 
"Tell me again how you got this job?"
 

 
Don't worry, I loves ya all, so forgive me if I refuse to drink the Kool-Aid.  And just for the record, yes I think there's a fair share of BS on the part of the cable manufactures and somewhere between you "sound science" anti-cable guys and the manufactures, lies the truth but the truth doesn't lie with the current crop of DBT's.  And no, I don't have a valid test to offer up in it's place and you can bet I'm racking my brain for a rational solution to the unasked question of what would I suggest.
 

 

[sanakaku]

This is like buying one of those overly expensive limestone necklace which assumes it can cure cancer, just by wearing them.

 

[Spelaeus]

So you're really going to try to tell us that someone who was randomly guessing in a DBT based cable scenario when there was no difference between the two cables would guess which cable was A and which cable was B 0% of the time? You've essentially said it right there, if you assign "heads" to one cable and "tails" to the other and flip a coin, the coin has a 50% chance of matching the cable at any given time. Even if we're to take your explanation for the "analogue nature of the human sensory system" (which, speaking as someone getting a degree in neuroscience, is also a tremendous amount of BS and pseudoscience), you're saying that you're able to hear an audible difference, but your ability to notice that difference should be expected to be less accurate than flipping a coin. You don't think that sounds just a little absurd?

 

[Prog Rock Man]

 
Quote:

Shike wrote:
 
First, I'd appreciate you citing these peer reviewed medical studies you keep bringing up.
 
No, I'm not going do a full paper on what's common knowledge in the medical field.  Check out a few medical studies for your own personal edification.
 
As I wrote, try keeping responses short as I can't do ever lengthening tit-for-tat exchanges.
 
Prog Rock Man wrote:
 
But in the case of cables you claim to be able to hear a difference, but I say that it is you having sight of the cables, not hearing is what makes the difference. So I do a test where you cannot see the cables anymore to find out if you really can hear a difference, then my proof is correct.
 
It doesn't matter that a person can't see the cables.  The evaluation standards of plus seventy percent correct identification guarantees fail.  Human senses, when at the extremes of their abilities, might exhibit only ten or twenty percent accuracy before they fail completely.  When you set the bar so high, that it exceeds the rational analogue nature of the human sensory system to detect a difference, you guarantee the results will come back fail.  No where in the world is this standard accepted as rational work place conditions but some how this standard applies here.
 
What I find galling, is that you so called "sound science" types aren't calling people on this point.  It's common knowledge that humans have an analogue sensory system.  It's common knowledge that as the sensory system is stressed, the level of one hundred percent detection drops in an analogue fashion.  And it's also common knowledge that human detection ranges will dependably drop into the ten or twenty percent range before total fail occurs   And yet, with this as common knowledge and the fact that the bar is set unrealistically high, coupled with the fact that you guys don't call foul, shows that you're wanting fail to occur, thereby showing extreme prejudice of nature, or bias.  Talk about walking into a load of who-ie.
 
When you guys want to come up to where reality meets the road, then you'll have some play.  Until then, you're just a bunch of bias test givers who have some sort of pseudo science agenda going on to make you guys fell good about yourselves.
 
But hey, we'll always have beer.

You say that you can hear the difference between cables. But I am reading the above and your other posts that a blind cable test is at the very edge of sensory perception and DBT pass results are too difficult to achieve.
 
I say that if cables were really different, like the sound from Porsche engines (as per a previous post) with a bit of practice, we would be able to hear the difference in a blind test. The fact that we cannot is not a failure of the test, it is a failure of the claim that cables sound different.
 
If cables really did sound different, a 70% pass result would be no problem.

 

[Roger Strummer]

Quote:

 
If you're calling the flipping of coins, but we're not flipping coins, we're dealing with human's sensory system which everybody knows, declines in it's ability as more and more demands are made on it until even ten or twenty percent is unobtainable.
 
No.  What's happening is that the sensory system is reaching the end of it's analogue abilities.
 
We're talking an arbitrary number of convenience that serves a bias position, that fails in it's nature to take into consideration the nature of the human sensory system and how it works, assuring fail.  Even human intelligence is assigned a bell curve, yet we all know degree'd people who are dumb as nails.
 
"Tell me again how you got this job?"
 

 
Don't worry, I loves ya all, so forgive me if I refuse to drink the Kool-Aid.  And just for the record, yes I think there's a fair share of BS on the part of the cable manufactures and somewhere between you "sound science" anti-cable guys and the manufactures, lies the truth but the truth doesn't lie with the current crop of DBT's.  And no, I don't have a valid test to offer up in it's place and you can bet I'm racking my brain for a rational solution to the unasked question of what would I suggest.
 

You are not very familiar with statistics and its role in research, right? (Not saying that with any negative connotation by the way). Here is the point of comparing the results of a DBT to a coin flip:
 
Our hypothesis is that humans cannot hear a difference between cables. (Null hypothesis)
 
Suppose that humans Ai (for a large number of i, say 40) doesn't hear a difference and decides to guess, then in average they will be right 50% of the time (its a Bernoulli distribution with p=0.5). (Hell, for arguments sake imagine them being deaf, they would get the same result in average). Then we have no evidence to deny our hypothesis, so we cannot say anything about them hearing a difference (and it casts doubt that there is that difference if that results keeps repeating).
 
Then suppose that humans Bi claim to hear a difference, then they get it right 51% of the time, then the probability that they are guessing (and heard no difference) is pretty big, because basically they got the same result as the ones guessing, so we have no basis to reject the hypothesis again, they are statistically the same as the deaf guys guessing. But if they got a 80% (just to say a number) and the number of individuals was large enough (determining that large enough isn't as trivial as it seems at first sight), then there is a low probability they were guessing, so we have no proof to doubt they heard a difference, so we can reject the hypothesis  with a small percentage of error, so we have some evidence to believe there are differences.
 
Remeber two things, this does not say that every guy has to have 80%+ correct answers to reject the null hypothesss, but the average of the subjects has to be. So a DBT of 1 guy is statistically insignificant for rejecting the null hypothesis. 
 
The second thing is that all of this is control error, even if we reject the null hypothesis the result can be wrong (also the test is design so that the probability of error is less than 5%, depends on the field studied, or the p-value for someone familiar with statistics). Moreover these tests say nothing about the nature of what is heard even when the null hypothesis is rejected.
 
So far no test has made us reject the hypothesis that humans cannot hear a difference between cables, so DBT suggests us that it probably is true. Even if the analogue nature (which I have yet to read some literature about it), it is (or should be) taken into account into the design of the test, so it doesn't invalidate DBT and more generally Null Hypothesis Testing.
 
 
 

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

But when performing a DBT with two cables, your results should be compared to a 50% chance of being correct when guessing randomly.
 
If you're calling the flipping of coins, but we're not flipping coins, we're dealing with human's sensory system which everybody knows, declines in it's ability as more and more demands are made on it until even ten or twenty percent is unobtainable.
 
If you were right 20% or 30% of the time, you were doing worse than random guessing.
 
No.  What's happening is that the sensory system is reaching the end of it's analogue abilities.
 
In your cable scenario, all that 70% success requirement does is attempt to ensure that you weren't just guessing randomly and happened to do a little better than 50%.
 
We're talking an arbitrary number of convenience that serves a bias position, that fails in it's nature to take into consideration the nature of the human sensory system and how it works, assuring fail.  Even human intelligence is assigned a bell curve, yet we all know degree'd people who are dumb as nails.
 
"Tell me again how you got this job?"
 

 
Don't worry, I loves ya all, so forgive me if I refuse to drink the Kool-Aid.  And just for the record, yes I think there's a fair share of BS on the part of the cable manufactures and somewhere between you "sound science" anti-cable guys and the manufactures, lies the truth but the truth doesn't lie with the current crop of DBT's.  And no, I don't have a valid test to offer up in it's place and you can bet I'm racking my brain for a rational solution to the unasked question of what would I suggest.
 

We have about 100 years of psychophyiscs research and counting which attempts to map the limits of human discriminaion. As you say (or I infer from it anyway) some tasks are easy by nature , some are hard by nature, some are hard by degree and some are easier by degree. For instance detecting the difference between black and white or round and square for someone with "normal" vision and cognitive abilities, easy. Detecting  30% audio distortion from 0% distortion harder but doable under most circumstances. So far so good. detecting the difference between 100hz and 120hz check, the difference between 1000hz and 999hz (unlikely). Lossless vs lossy  very context dependent but often doable, agreed.
 
In all of the above cases there are significant measurable differences (for an analytical tool 999 vs 1000 is a gross difference) . In the case of cables when the FR, Noise and distortion have been measured (rare I know, I have done it myself crudely) the differences are (to date) very very very small (apart from a few pathological cases) , to the point where the differences would seem (according to prior research) to be outside the realm of human capability. At this point when we hear about cables that are reported to be vastly audibly different from others or even subtly so we ask: are there any audible differences ?
 
Then we have to ask for better evidence than "I can hear a difference" .
 
Now to remove normal human bises we test the subject denying them the biggest source of bias. At this point the human sensory system can be viewed as a black box, we do not know what happens under the hood and we do not care, we have inputs and outputs. A person asked to detect the difference between A and B can have a number of results: 1. They correctly detect the difference, 2. They fail to detect the difference 3 they guess correctly or they 4 guess incorrecty.
 
We cannot initially tell the difference between 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. That is why we do lots of tests and use probability statistics to work out the likelihood of guessing. To demonstrate very probable ability to detect a difference subjects have to manage a hit-rate that is less than 5% likely by chance alone (9/10) , why not 5/5 , well see "lucky coin", 9/10 though seemingly worse than 5/5 is in fact statistically stronger. If you do many many tests the 5% probability can be reached with paradoxically less accuracy i.e 15/20 works (75%) with a hundred  tests it will be under 60%
 
If it is a task that is beyond subects they fail, if it  is easy they succeed and points in-between. There are plenty of positive DBTs out there. How well folks do is dependent on their abilities and the difficulty of the task. Some tasks we will normally fail at, some we will almost always ace.  
 

 

[Roger Strummer]

^ Nice to see I wasn't the only one that knows statistics and wrote a block of text explaining it 

 

[alexxfloo]

Quote:

^ Nice to see I wasn't the only one that knows statistics and wrote a block of text explaining it 

1.We are a few, you know.
 
You cannot argue with beeman because he really doesn't understand statistics, as i can prove with the following answer which is absurd:
 
-If you were right 20% or 30% of the time, you were doing worse than random guessing.
Beeman answer: No.  What's happening is that the sensory system is reaching the end of it's analogue abilities.
 
Q.E.D.
 
 
@beeman: And belive me beeman, our ear is no match from a ear-like-microphone. It's like saying you're faster than a computer at calculations. And a computer doesn't have an imagination and it's not subjective by any means. If we are going to test cables it's gonna be in two ways:
 
1. Subjective but statistically like it has been said above. If you don't understand statistics then it's useless.
2. By comparing cables in a studio were we can test a cable by a standard: More accurate freq response, thd, etc...
 
Any other methods you come up with are irrelevant.
 

 

[BadassBob]

Quote:

Quote:

. . . I used to use Monoprice cables previously, but developed a severe dislike of them because the cable they use is far too rigid, and the the plugs dont have much bite to them.

 

It's better they have less bite than too much IMO.  I remember running to Rat Shack and picking up a pair of Monster's for $8 when an Emotiva amp that I ordered came in.  One RCA plug was machine wrong, wouldn't fully go on and ripped the jack out of the amp.
 
Personally I love locking RCA plugs myself (one reason I have some Viablue IC's), but the cheapest I can find plugs is $20 for four shipped then roughly .80 per ft of cable.  Compared to the $2.50 or so per monoprice cable the choice is pretty simple at that point.
 
 
 
Still - if anyone knows a cheaper supplier of locking RCA plugs could you PM me a link to them?

Many of the Monoprice cables I have dont have hardly any bite at all.  If you move the gear a bit, the cable pops off.  Of course some are better than others, but Ive had more duds than good ones. 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

I switched from Silver High Breed to Van Damme because the SHB cable was so rigid it could lift my little Firestone DAC up. You can tie Van Damme in knots. I will still recommend cables, but only in such criteria and not sound.

 

[ROBSCIX]

Why is it when people want to use cheap dollar store cables they feel the need to try and talk everybody else into using the same? -Offering up some Revelation they think nobody else can figure out?
 
You are right, there are many cables that are way to pricey and are snake oil and you have many cables that are serious garbage.
Now, many of use operate in between these two extremes, not wanting to wast our money but at least wanting some quality construction and materials for our
systems.  Price is also relative to people, a product that may be serious expensive or out of your price range may be normal and no big deal to others.
I would think it silly to build a high end system and then tie it together using cheap generic cables from the bargain bin.
 
To each their own, if you want to use cheap cables or high end cables that is your preference for your system.

 

[alexxfloo]

Quote:

Why is it when people want to use cheap dollar store cables they feel the need to try and talk everybody else into using the same? -Offering up some Revelation they think nobody else can figure out?
 
You are right, there are many cables that are way to pricey and are snake oil and you have many cables that are serious garbage.
Now, many of use operate in between these two extremes, not wanting to wast our money but at least wanting some quality construction and materials for our
systems.  Price is also relative to people, a product that may be serious expensive or out of your price range may be normal and no big deal to others.
I would think it silly to build a high end system and then tie it together using cheap generic cables from the bargain bin.
 
To each their own, if you want to use cheap cables or high end cables that is your preference for your system.

Please don't post before you read all the posts before. I specifically said that i am not against good quality cables with gold plated connections made by a good manufacturer. I am against exotic cables like usb cable for 500$ or 25 feet of thin cable for 125$ with no connections. For exotic cable example you can check jena labs, they have some 13.000$ cables and you can add 1 feet for nothing less than 600$. At lawtonaudio you can recable your denons with jena labs cable for more then 400$. If that's not absurd what is.