I will deal with the annoying and internet clogging story of ' the quality cables vs the coat hangers' test. On the internet "the audio professionals" and "the audio engineers" are mentioned with the reference to the test. First, how reliable are the views of the sound studio professionals if, as some say, they did the test or repeated it later.
The quality of the sense of hearing is not the same for everybody. There are various degrees of the ability and of the talent not only to make musical sound or music but also to hear it. The ability to properly hear belongs also to the realm of talent. Being a "sound engineer" and working in a recording studio does not guarantee the ability to hear properly, to distinguish and to evaluate the sound. Quite the opposite. Witness the sonic trash, that is the low audio quality of the many, some would say the majority, of the compact discs that audio professionals has been making up to now. Many of the sound engineers in the studios rely on the visual cues and information instead of the aural ones. In other words, for their recording decisions they rely on the visual information from the screens and from the display panels of the sound studio technical equipment and not on their hearing ability. Indeed many of them are not capable of that. Many years in the studio is many years of the loud noise through the headphones and the resulting inner ear damage. This damage shows itself in the reduced ability to hear the higher frequencies properly, in the reduced ability to properly separate the frequencies and to hear the pitch and the tonal differences. My view is that an average audio professional is on the same level in his 'audio' ability and judgement as an average well self taught 'audiophile' amateur of some years of experience and dedication to his/her[a bit less so] hobby. There is therefore no need to emphasize, in order to push an argument, the fact that 'a professional' says this or that on this or that subject.
Take the " the coat hanger test" with a spoon of salt. The "audio professionals" in the "high quality speaker cables" vs. the coat hangers audio test were [to quote his words] : "First of all, I’m a new (61 year old) kid on this block who has been involved in hi-fi for over 45 years” and his 'in the autumn of their lives' pensioner 'baby boomer' buddies. "...has been involved in hi-fi for over 45 years" in this case can simply mean that for all these years he has been listening to his loud home stereo system. Some 5 decades of 'rock' music blasting their ears must have done the work of damage to their sense of hearing. Aside from them, there are many that are in their 20s of their lives and whose hearing is so damaged by the 'over-cranked' volume through headphones that their damaged hearing is on the level of hearing of 80 or 90 years old people. This is the 1st variable in the test in question and most importantly it was not tested and treated as a parameter of the test itself. Myself, I would have first properly tested the ability to simply hear of all of this merry group of 'experts'. The 2nd variable in the test is the age of the 'audio experts'. With the advancing age the ability to hear declines. 60 + years old baby boomers plus the decades of numbing noise prefered, generally, by the loud generation of the 1960's and the 1970's with the resulting inner ear damage equals the sense of hearing on the level of those that are 80 to 90 years old. The age related hearing ability and 'the track record' of their aural health were the second variable in the test. Again, untested and not regarded as a parameter in the test. The 3d variable is the source of the signal / the current. Was it some 'el cheapo' hi-fi component or was it some decent machine capable of generating and processing a signal of good quality ? There does not seem to be any information on this component of the test. The 4th variable are the speakers. Not a word on them either, at least I did not find any. The 5th variable are 'the wires' themselves. "The top quality" audio cables that were used were the "Monster cable/s". I am not familiar with this product but somebody described them as coat hanger wires with shielding. This judgement might seem to be a bit harsh but maybe not so because nothing is known about the 6th variable in the test, the infamous coat hangers themselves. Were they made from steel ? Were they the ones with the annealed steel core wrapped in an annealed copper or were they made from the solid annealed copper ? If the 'Monster cables' are made simply from the annealed copper, as many cables are, then the notion that these cables are simply glorified coat hanger wires is not far from the truth. In this case the buddies doing the test shot themselves in their drunken feet because they tested coat hangers against coat hangers. Here we come to the interesting variable in this test. The author of the report on the experiment first cites "5 buddies" doing the experiment. As the test progresses the number then grows to "12 buddies". Was there a drinking party and "buddies" were arriving, one by one, and imbibing ? Were there alcoholic drinks fuelling the testing activity and how many of them ? How reliable are the human senses, in this case the audiophile standard of hearing, when they are not in the 'sharp' mode but are 'relaxed' instead ? Who supervised the test to ensure the proper testing procedure and standards ? Who gave them alcohol breathalyser test ?
This test was a joke, yet now it lives a life of fame on the internet. It has acquired the status of an urban legend - "The Audio Professionals test the High End Audiophile Cables against the Humble Coat Hangers". This hi-fi urban legend is on the level of the tale of an alligator that lives in the sewers of New York and devours, for the nourishment, some unfortunate city of New York sanitation employees that wander into its hunting grounds underneath the paved roads and streets of the city.
The veracity of the now famous test lies on the bottom of a bottle.
Anybody for repeating, with proper and technical supervision, the test ?
