It is not clear with many ABX tests, but there are some where the subjects admit to guessing as they could not hear any difference. That is what I did with mine and it is why I gave up and never published it as it was not completed with enough switches. I also saw no point in publishing a series of guesses.
It would be a very interesting extra for future ABX tests to ask the subjects if they were guessing or really thought they could still hear a difference.
This is why I'd love to see blind tests where the expectation is not to differentiate between A and B.
Believers say that they can only evaluate with a long listening session and without the "stress" of having to tell the difference.
OK, we'll concede that point to them for the sake of argument.
Instead, the listener will conduct a full review on unknown cables and give them ratings on how they sound and other cable "qualities."
It would be wonderful fun to find rave reviews of coathangers, lamp cord and maybe a wire with a resistor soldered into one channel. I am confident this would happen. If the listener knew there were deliberately "bad" cables up for unsighted review, I'm also confident that some megabuck cables would get trashed if the listener suspected they were listening to the coathanger.
There would be a lot of red faces among the golden ears. The only problem would be recruiting believers to test the various cables. My guess is that they'd shy away from possibly giving a glowing review to a coathanger.
It is not clear with many ABX tests, but there are some where the subjects admit to guessing as they could not hear any difference. That is what I did with mine and it is why I gave up and never published it as it was not completed with enough switches. I also saw no point in publishing a series of guesses.
It would be a very interesting extra for future ABX tests to ask the subjects if they were guessing or really thought they could still hear a difference.
This is why I'd love to see blind tests where the expectation is not to differentiate between A and B.
Believers say that they can only evaluate with a long listening session and without the "stress" of having to tell the difference.
OK, we'll concede that point to them for the sake of argument.
Instead, the listener will conduct a full review on unknown cables and give them ratings on how they sound and other cable "qualities."
It would be wonderful fun to find rave reviews of coathangers, lamp cord and maybe a wire with a resistor soldered into one channel. I am confident this would happen. If the listener knew there were deliberately "bad" cables up for unsighted review, I'm also confident that some megabuck cables would get trashed if the listener suspected they were listening to the coathanger.
There would be a lot of red faces among the golden ears. The only problem would be recruiting believers to test the various cables. My guess is that they'd shy away from possibly giving a glowing review to a coathanger.
I read some blind reviews of wines a short while ago. The guy doing the testing gave his impressions on each wine, and then tried to guess which ones they were (except he knew which ones were in the group to begin with) and got it totally wrong. If I recall, the cheapest wine ranked up top.
As with audio or wine, the reviewers can be the most clueless of the bunch, while the engineers/winemakers or salesmen/sommeliers the most capable people.
However there's one thing that really differentiate wine and cables here : cables are done with the same metals yielding the same properties, while wine is done on a lot of different types of soil with different chemical compositions, yielding very different characteristics. While it's unlikely that cables can have different characteristics, it's very logical and as well scientifically demontrable that wines are indeed different.
It is not clear with many ABX tests, but there are some where the subjects admit to guessing as they could not hear any difference. That is what I did with mine and it is why I gave up and never published it as it was not completed with enough switches. I also saw no point in publishing a series of guesses.
It would be a very interesting extra for future ABX tests to ask the subjects if they were guessing or really thought they could still hear a difference.
This is why I'd love to see blind tests where the expectation is not to differentiate between A and B.
Believers say that they can only evaluate with a long listening session and without the "stress" of having to tell the difference.
OK, we'll concede that point to them for the sake of argument.
Instead, the listener will conduct a full review on unknown cables and give them ratings on how they sound and other cable "qualities."
It would be wonderful fun to find rave reviews of coathangers, lamp cord and maybe a wire with a resistor soldered into one channel. I am confident this would happen. If the listener knew there were deliberately "bad" cables up for unsighted review, I'm also confident that some megabuck cables would get trashed if the listener suspected they were listening to the coathanger.
There would be a lot of red faces among the golden ears. The only problem would be recruiting believers to test the various cables. My guess is that they'd shy away from possibly giving a glowing review to a coathanger.
The closest blind test to that is Hifi Wigwam's power cord test where various forum members were sent four power cords to try on their own systems. They were made up to look the same and two were. The two that were the same were often identified as being different.
It is not clear with many ABX tests, but there are some where the subjects admit to guessing as they could not hear any difference. That is what I did with mine and it is why I gave up and never published it as it was not completed with enough switches. I also saw no point in publishing a series of guesses.
It would be a very interesting extra for future ABX tests to ask the subjects if they were guessing or really thought they could still hear a difference.
This is why I'd love to see blind tests where the expectation is not to differentiate between A and B.
Believers say that they can only evaluate with a long listening session and without the "stress" of having to tell the difference.
OK, we'll concede that point to them for the sake of argument.
Instead, the listener will conduct a full review on unknown cables and give them ratings on how they sound and other cable "qualities."
It would be wonderful fun to find rave reviews of coathangers, lamp cord and maybe a wire with a resistor soldered into one channel. I am confident this would happen. If the listener knew there were deliberately "bad" cables up for unsighted review, I'm also confident that some megabuck cables would get trashed if the listener suspected they were listening to the coathanger.
There would be a lot of red faces among the golden ears. The only problem would be recruiting believers to test the various cables. My guess is that they'd shy away from possibly giving a glowing review to a coathanger.
Didn't you plan to build several sets of cable with a different materials inside but with identical exteriors and send them for review to volunteering head fiers?
If a cable is properly built, that is.
If a cable has exceptionally high non-linear resistance, it can change how the final transducers output sound even if the volume is the same.
Check HeadRoom's impedance vs. frequency graph on the HD800.
Or you can make your own resistor cables by soldering a couple of resistors in a Neutrik plug. Did it many times. Pretty fun.
Do you know how they teach refraction of light to kids in school without going into the technical jargon? Picture a group of runners all trying to enter the ocean and swim.
All can not get into the water at the same place so some go around to get into the water. Thus you see white light bent into all the colors that make it up.
Refraction is the bending of a wave when it enters a medium where it's speed is different. The speed is different because of the material. I am guessing here. Imo, I think there is a correlation between light and electric signals traveling through a power cord or interconnect. It is much more easy to understand this with interconnects and tone than a power cord. Both are energy and both are changed by the material they pass though. In physics at this point there is no papers on a relationship between light and electricity acting this way but if our cable questions are ever answered by a type of physics math I feel it will look a little like the Snell-Descartes law for refraction.
We have only been rapidly developing the use of electricity for 100 years. Not really that long.
[size=medium]If a copper wire is connected into a series circuit with an aluminum wire of the same diameter, the charges in the copper will flow slower. This occurs because there is one movable charge per each atom in the metals, but there are more atoms packed into the copper than into the aluminum, so there is more charge in each bit of copper. When the charge-sea flows into the copper, it gets packed together and slows down. When it flows out into the aluminum, it spreads out a bit and speeds up. This means that we cannot know how fast the charges flow unless we know how dense the charge-sea is within the metal. [/size]
Not all is known about the slight effect metals have on current. In optics and physics, Snell's law (also known as Descartes' law, the Snell–Descartes law, and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water and glass.
In the above paragraph the other waves we are talking about here is sound.
In underwater acoustics, refraction is the bending or curving of a sound ray that results when the ray passes through a sound speed gradient from a region of one sound speed to a region of a different speed. The amount of ray bending is dependent upon the amount of difference between sound speeds, that is, the variation in temperature, salinity, and pressure of the water. Similar acoustics effects are also found in the Earth's atmosphere. The phenomenon of refraction of sound in the atmosphere has been known for centuries, however, beginning in the early 1970s, widespread analysis of this effect came into vogue through the designing of urban highways and noise barriers to address the meteorological effects of bending of sound rays in the lower atmosphere. So far we have seen that there is underwater acoustic refraction, acoustic refraction in the Earth's atmosphere and light refraction. In these issues of refraction the relative density of a material changes how the refraction takes place. Diamonds are high on the density index so more refraction. As I understand it the photons of light are slowed more thus a longer prism effect on walls when light goes through diamond. Glass less as it is not as hard.
The temperature, salinity and pressure of water are also changing the refractive index thus a different refraction of sound waves. I would guess that this same truth holds true for sound passing through matter of different relative densities. The end statement here is that I feel it is a very real area of study to find out if the charge-sea, photons, and sound wave energy act the same when traveling from one area of molecular density to an area of higher molecular density. It has been proven completely that sound waves and light do react this way.
This could explain why the cables only work on some of the equipment.
One part of the equipment is the same relative density metal for the charge-sea to pass though. The change occurs when the cable material is harder and the charge-sea slows down. We know that silver has a specific gravity of 10.5 and copper is 8.9. This to me is the ultimate guessed explanation of why the material sounds so different when used in cables.
Do you know how they teach refraction of light to kids in school without going into the technical jargon? Picture a group of runners all trying to enter the ocean and swim.
All can not get into the water at the same place so some go around to get into the water. Thus you see white light bent into all the colors that make it up.
Refraction is the bending of a wave when it enters a medium where it's speed is different. The speed is different because of the material. I am guessing here. Imo, I think there is a correlation between light and electric signals traveling through a power cord or interconnect. It is much more easy to understand this with interconnects and tone than a power cord. Both are energy and both are changed by the material they pass though. In physics at this point there is no papers on a relationship between light and electricity acting this way but if our cable questions are ever answered by a type of physics math I feel it will look a little like the Snell-Descartes law for refraction.
We have only been rapidly developing the use of electricity for 100 years. Not really that long.
[size=medium]If a copper wire is connected into a series circuit with an aluminum wire of the same diameter, the charges in the copper will flow slower. This occurs because there is one movable charge per each atom in the metals, but there are more atoms packed into the copper than into the aluminum, so there is more charge in each bit of copper. When the charge-sea flows into the copper, it gets packed together and slows down. When it flows out into the aluminum, it spreads out a bit and speeds up. This means that we cannot know how fast the charges flow unless we know how dense the charge-sea is within the metal. [/size]
Not all is known about the slight effect metals have on current. In optics and physics, Snell's law (also known as Descartes' law, the Snell–Descartes law, and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water and glass.
In the above paragraph the other waves we are talking about here is sound.
In underwater acoustics, refraction is the bending or curving of a sound ray that results when the ray passes through a sound speed gradient from a region of one sound speed to a region of a different speed. The amount of ray bending is dependent upon the amount of difference between sound speeds, that is, the variation in temperature, salinity, and pressure of the water. Similar acoustics effects are also found in the Earth's atmosphere. The phenomenon of refraction of sound in the atmosphere has been known for centuries, however, beginning in the early 1970s, widespread analysis of this effect came into vogue through the designing of urban highways and noise barriers to address the meteorological effects of bending of sound rays in the lower atmosphere. So far we have seen that there is underwater acoustic refraction, acoustic refraction in the Earth's atmosphere and light refraction. In these issues of refraction the relative density of a material changes how the refraction takes place. Diamonds are high on the density index so more refraction. As I understand it the photons of light are slowed more thus a longer prism effect on walls when light goes through diamond. Glass less as it is not as hard.
The temperature, salinity and pressure of water are also changing the refractive index thus a different refraction of sound waves. I would guess that this same truth holds true for sound passing through matter of different relative densities. The end statement here is that I feel it is a very real area of study to find out if the charge-sea, photons, and sound wave energy act the same when traveling from one area of molecular density to an area of higher molecular density. It has been proven completely that sound waves and light do react this way.
This could explain why the cables only work on some of the equipment.
One part of the equipment is the same relative density metal for the charge-sea to pass though. The change occurs when the cable material is harder and the charge-sea slows down. We know that silver has a specific gravity of 10.5 and copper is 8.9. This to me is the ultimate guessed explanation of why the material sounds so different when used in cables.
If a thin wire is connected in a circuit end to end with a thick wire, it turns out that the charges in the thin wire move faster. This makes sense, it works just like water in rivers. If a huge wide river moves into a narrow channel, the water speeds up. When the channel opens out again downstream, the river slows down again. The flow in a very thin wire will be tend to be fast, even if the value of current is fairly low. This means that we can't know the speed of the flowing charge-sea unless we know how thick the wires are.
It is a combo of charge-sea hold of atom per area of metal and amount of metal used in cable.
This is why bigger is sometimes better!
Any person with an electrical engineering degree here will agree with the above, hands down.
How the current flows only on the skin......... the question I have stated above is really only focusing on the fact that a charge does change it's speed under the condition of metal type and possibly size of cord. There could be effects to the audio even just by the speed of the charge-sea. I am just saying that a study of refraction could answer what we question in cables. The charge-sea is by all proven facts changing speed. Any electrical engineer would agree.
That when the charge-sea comes in contact with new metal/cord size/speed of travel it may fall under the same effects as refraction.If even the skin effect changed the speed of the charge-sea then we would see the refraction take place.
Don't questions of cable construction properties become 'academic' if under a blind test the performance is perceived to be no better than basic lamp cord?
This is all really interesting and good timing in my case as I just ordered some LCD-2's and then stumbled upon a certain review which gave a lot of credence to a very expensive after-market cable. My first thought is that I'm not going to spend half the price of my headphones on just a cable for them.
Coming from a sound background, I was skeptical. I was always taught that you certainly wanted to avoid cheap cables, but that up to a certain standard, you'd see very little difference if any at all. This makes sense to me. I'm not an electrical engineer but it seems that the biggest worry you'd have in making a cable would be to give sufficient shielding so as to reduce possible interference noise. Back when I was doing field sound for T.V. work, I've experienced accidentally throwing an XLR cable across a power mains line and hearing the resulting hum. Of course this was a line from a gaffer truck with some serious voltage so I imagine the best policy would be to not cross lines with high voltage or no reasonable amount of shielding will help. But in any case, apart from interference shielding, and using good quality copper (or silver in some cases) I was wondering what could be improved upon and what difference it would make.
I looked up this particular article on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_wire
Thinking speaker wire should be similar to headphone cable wiring. By the way, is that a flawed assumption (really, I'm asking)?
Anyway, after reading the article, though I didn't understand it all, I was even more skeptical.
But it seems a lot of people hear the difference in using some of these cables. I'm not saying there is no difference in quality (I haven't compared yet myself). I just wonder how much of it is placebo effect and how much is real.
In any case I can't see some of these cables being worth what they are priced at even if they do make a slight improvement. If anything I'd probably be more interested in learning how to make my own cable before going down that route.
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