When people find differences and ask for answers, they get the standard "it's in your head", or wire is wire, or miles and miles, or links to silly things by pseudoexperts proclaiming mythbuster quips..
Guys, I've deleted a few posts which were abusive. Science certainly doesn't back itself up with personal attacks and neither should any of you either.
The problem with these discussion is that most people aren't here to attempt to learn anything new and develop a deeper understanding, but only to argue in whatever way they can that they are right and everyone else is wrong. It'd be more useful if people approached the discussion of science in the first way, as the purpose of it IS so that we gain a better understanding of our lives, the world and the universe around us, not fight people over beliefs.
Please don't delete any posts that are abusive towards me. I'm a grown up. I can take it. To be honest, I don't think this forum really needs moderating. The slips into ad hominem reveal as much as the logically considered arguments.
Please don't delete any posts that are abusive towards me. I'm a grown up. I can take it. To be honest, I don't think this forum really needs moderating. The slips into ad hominem reveal as much as the logically considered arguments.
In the end, why make it a matter of belief in -other- people's opinion: if this bugs you, keep an eye out for the next headfi-type meet in your area, go there and -listen for yourself-! I'm sure there will be plenty of high-end equipment, connected by equally high-end cabling. Now they won't necessarily let you swap cables, but there may be someone with equipment you are familiar with, using fancy cables, for a comparison. And generally, the whole thing should be fun either way.
I would think that IF cables do make a difference, the most obvious place for that would be the ones going straight to the headphone, which is also where the strongest statements, bordering on potentially verifiably audible, are made (ex.: silver cabling enhances treble, makes headphones "brighter") Maybe bring your own favorite headphones that are familiar-sounding, and see if you can try a pair of upgraded ones, or if yours have removable cabling, ask to swap.
Generally, since I joined Head-Fi, I have read (and learned!) a lot to put things in perspective, and read between the lines of flowery prose for info that would be relevant to my listening experience. I also spent quite some money -_-;; on pretty decent equipment (which I do enjoy a lot) to have a point of comparison when I read reviews or comments, and how much of a difference it would make to my own experience (Hint: at a certain price point, the difference will ALWAYS be (very) subtle, even or especially if somebody writes that the equipment (or cable) "wipes the floor" with every other similar piece...
) And like others wrote: similar opinions are not necessarily a reliable indication of the cable's performance...
I personally have some upgraded cabling, for a number of reasons, but a change in sound quality isn't one of them. After many hours of listening, I still cannot hear any difference.
However, since sound perception is a function of how the brain processes it, and if spending $$$$ makes one's brain think it sounds better and thus enjoy music more, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think it IS wrong to give people on a budget the impression that it's worth spending money on cables when they're better off putting it into components that have a -measurable- influence (Headphones first and foremost!!!, amps, DACs to a lesser extent...) or worse make them think that they can fix shortcomings in their current setup by swapping any cable in the chain... unless these are perceived, in which case the cable-swap may change that perception...
Ever since I got linked to that whole "cables" topic and read the ridiculous number of sources repeating that from basically regular listeners all the way to top audio engineers and reviewers could not distinguish cables in blind testing, I have been highly conflicted about reviews on this site.
Recently just read a review about another IEM and in it, the cables are being mentioned as enhancing the bass, helping with soundstage and imaging. Sounds like a big difference...
But these are $200 cables while audio professionals can't tell the difference between $10 cables and $1000 cables or even coat hangers in the most extreme case...
So then should I believe the rest of what these people say or is it just as likely to be as inaccurate? Or do cables still make a difference beyond just peoples imaginations?
The dilemma here is that if I was to take these reviewers seriously, it would mean that I believe in cables making a difference despite all the empirical and scientific findings... If I don't believe that cables make a difference, then I am assuming they are talking out of their ass when it comes to sound and that anything they say is probably worthless!
Someone tell me what to believe and make it simple!
Maybe the subject of drugs would be a little more radical. Half the world say don't try em, you can see the pitfalls others have experienced and even if you try them once it could lead into trouble. There were a group of teens recently who wreaked a car the very first night when trying drugs. With a persons choice of cables, it is as easy as going to a fellow Head-Fi'ers house or to a meet and experiencing for yourself. The really dumb thing is to take others options with-out a couple of tests.
There is due cause at Head-Fi to be hyper-critical of what some say, as there are many expensive tweeks that end up being worthless and completely ridiculous in the end. The part that I could never understand is how folks who don't believe in something like cables get on their soap-box and insist that it can't be proven to their ears or by modern scientific testing and there for doesn't exist.
I did not believe in cables when I joined in 08, but I had an open mind to learn and listen to all sides. At my first meet I found proof of cable changes which confirmed beliefs that had started to congeal at home. Later I became a true believer that each part of the signal chain is just as important as the rest. If it really is a placebo effect why would it last years on end? I will use whatever makes my systems sound the best even using super inexpensive cables in places and set-ups that warrant it.
At first I thought it was cool to get into these round and round discussions here, even seeing light at the end of the tunnel, the results were always the same in the end with no hard facts ever being for or against this issue. Many heated debates even cost long time members their status when they were banned for being out of line. So in the end I put in my two cents every couple of months just for fun.
I would think any new member would realize there must be something there to at least try, so they can take part in the debate themselves. In the end I don't think I'm wrong but maybe my rigs would be looked at as unbalanced with having spent more money on cables than headphones. I was ultimately looking for a certain sound signature that I ended up finding in the end partially due to not listening to people tell me what to do, but listening to my ears and instincts.
Because you're still the same human being you were all those years and likely have only had your biases reinforced by yourself and others throughout those years.
Because you're still the same human being you were all those years and likely have only had your biases reinforced by yourself and others throughout those years.
A noisy hotel ballroom with a CD you're probably not familiar with isn't going to prove anything. If you want to find out for sure, buy a fancy cable that has a 90 day return policy, set up a pair of preamps to balance line levels, and check for yourself. But the most important part of what I said there is the 90 day return policy.
people don't really seem to have an appreciation of how secondary, filtered and delayed our "conscious" experience of the world is
our brains are deeply hardwired to filter, censor, edit every piece of sensory input to manage our "awareness" to reinforce our egos, confirm our pre-existing bias/world views, secure our position in our social groups
this is absolutely beyond our conscious control - not a matter of "simple honesty", little affected by contrary experience once we have formed "workable" opinions, particulary after we determine that there is social reforcement for these beliefs
these insights are a staple of modern perceptual psychology, specific to audio we have over a century of psychoacoustic perceptual research using the Scientific Method
read peceptual psychology studies, books, procedures - admit you are also human, also subject to these reasoning, perceptual errors, illusions
start using controls,level matching, Blinding in your listening evaluations - then report back to us what you "really" perceive
People spend vast amounts of time in this forum debating and discussing the technical minutiae of angels dancing on the heads of pins. Folks vomit out cut and paste from scientific studies and doctoral thesises, and none of it means a tinker's damn.
The things that *really* matter... speaker design, equalization and room treatment seldom get discussed, and when they do, it's either with vomiting out scientific cut and paste, or in general vagueries that don't help anyone.
I read person after person saying, "room treatment is important" (myself included) but I have yet to see anyone post that has a general grasp of the subject (myself included again). People love to put on white coats and goggles and say, "Trust me, I'm a doctor!" but they don't seem to be able to sit down and discuss things that really matter with clarity and directness.
I don't have a lot of patience with people who make things unduely complicated. Just now, I saw a thread that asked if CDs were lossless or were they made from MP3s. The answer is simple. "Yes! CDs are lossless." But instead the answer was "I don't know. They're normally downsamples from 24 bit..." and links to articles on hot mastering,
Sometimes I think people are deliberately trying to confuse things.
"If I buy fancy cables, will my headphones sound better?"
"What about expensive power cords?"
"Do amps and CD players have an individual sound signature?"
"Do vinyl records sound better than CDs?"
"Does lossless sound better than high bitrate MP3s?"
"Do standalone DACs sound better than the ones built into in iPods and CD players?"
"Do I need to mod my equipment to replace op amps?"
Now, I'm sure a legion of boy geniuses could spend days debating those seven questions, but if your intent is to listen to great sounding music, I can cut to the chase with two letters.
no
"If I buy fancy cables, will my headphones sound better?"
"What about expensive power cords?"
"Do amps and CD players have an individual sound signature?"
"Do vinyl records sound better than CDs?"
"Does lossless sound better than high bitrate MP3s?"
"Do standalone DACs sound better than the ones built into in iPods and CD players?"
"Do I need to mod my equipment to replace op amps?"
Now, I'm sure a legion of boy geniuses could spend days debating those seven questions, but if your intent is to listen to great sounding music, I can cut to the chase with two letters.
no
Don't you think this is a gross oversimplification, especially when you do not qualify the justification for this statement (my guess is along the lines "because differences have not been shown in double blind tests")
I could take this statement, go and hook up my ipod (or even my other DAC) to my amplifier and you say it will sound the same?
I wish it sounded the same - then I would sell my equipment and take a holiday.
I don't find gross oversimplifications very convincing.
If all you're trying to do is minimize the effect of cable capacitance, then you don't need to invoke such things as characteristic impedance. You just make your output impedance as low as is practical. Simple as that.
Sorry, but vanity and ego (not to mention condescension) don't make for effective arguments in the Sound Science forum.
No vanity or condescension was intenended. I have never heard a system with the resolution mine has no matter the cost. Even systems costing 100's of thousands of dollars fall short in key areas. They generally lack that sound you get in live situations. Not my system. And I didn't even spend $3,000. It comes down to knowing how to get the sound you are looking for & avoiding the pitfalls. I don't claim to hear things I can't hear but do claim what I can. I have listened to countless programs for playing music using files that are full resolution & cannot hear any difference but I do hear a difference in interconnects when componants are used with high output impedance & not when the ouput impedance is reasonably low.
My cap mods & D.C. coupling do actually work wonders to get that live sound I look for. Having a friend that owns a studio & having the ability to listen to recordings of the very instruments I heard live helps emmensely in giving me direction as to what sound tolook for in those instruments & if they sound correct then everything will sound as intended by the engineers.
It isn't a gross simplification. It's the facts based on the application. For the purposes of playing back music in a home setting, none of that matters. If you have to run cable from one end of the Hollywood Bowl to the other, you might need to consider how you go about doing that. But running a cable from CD player to amp and from amp to speakers on the other side of the living room, it makes no difference whatsoever.
Have you tested the line out of an iPod against the output of your DAC? I compared my iPod playing an AIFF file to a well regarded, quite expensive SACD player playing the original CD. Once I had balanced the levels the two sounded identical. I haven't tested against a standalone DAC myself. Feel free to try it.It takes a bit of work to balance the levels, but I bet you'll find the same thing I did.
You don't know until you've done the test yourself. I have done the test. I know.
yes there are many "crude DBT" - and no amount of testing will "prove" the negative proposition "no one can hear X"
this still doesn't give any reason to support "naive, just listen" opinions made without controls, Blinding - in ignorance of or even active hostility towards well established perceptual psychology, human limitations
The main difference between live sound and the sound of my stereo is the effect of the hall on the sound. Getting even remotely close to what it sounds like in a concert hall full of people is very difficult to pull off, even with a very good 5:1 system. If I was going to go about trying to replicate that, I would be focusing on the acoustics of the room my speakers are in and the arrangement and balance of the surround speakers. Then I'd try to find a decent synthetic hall ambience... It wouldn't be easy by any means.
Using interconnects and op amp modifications to try to recreate live sound would be like trying to fly to the moon by putting a saddle on a mosquito.
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