[castleofargh]

I agree. @magicscreen refers to something real. it certainly is a rare occurrence for him in this subsection of the forum, but a valid argument doesn't depend on who's making it. This is not Tweeter. #scientificmethodman

It's not all that hard to find cables with relatively big differences in impedance that might lead, under certain circumstances, to noticeable sound difference.
For what @71 dB explained about impedance relations and resulting voltages(which is likely to be most cases of actual sound differences for amateur audio, beside someone messing up when soldering the pins), we can get a noticeable amount of variation in amplitude of the overall gain or just at some frequencies. By that logic, cables can indeed make a difference.
Obviously any half decent listening test would match levels before starting, and remove a bunch of cases from the table. But we already have established over the years that it is an insurmountable standard for this community. So we're stuck. They only experience BS conditions and do mistake volume differences for about anything but what they are. IMO, not clearly acknowledging the potential volume difference, is only reinforcing their beliefs that something else in the sound(that can't be measured or similar silliness) is causing their impressions.

When it comes to impedance affecting sound, instead of looking for the most out of spec cable and not even knowing how, I rely on secret ancient artifacts long forgotten by the modern audiophile civilization. Mystic tools such as "the volume knob!" and "the equalizer!". But that's me, I always do weird revolutionary stuff like measuring a few variables for the cables I purchase to make sure I got what I paid for. I admit it, I'm a bad boy.

One exception I always bring up is for some IEMs with stupidly low impedance where I would look into voltage divider or just adding resistors in series(which could count as part of the cable I guess...). Because damping is going to suck anyway, and the extra resistance might save the amp section. I did that fairly often some years back. Now I just stay clear of those IEMs that are stupid-loads™, and my nomad life is exponentially easier and more enjoyable as a result. But again, weird IEMs exist, they can be popular and many have been FOTM(I have an hypothesis about audiophiles being on the M side of SM). Swapping cables on those IEMs is likely to actually be audible. To me swapping cables is backward thinking(unless the original cable had some known defect), and not the best solution, but with some luck it could look like one solution.

 

[PhonoPhi]

I agree. @magicscreen refers to something real. it's certainly is a rare occurrence for him in this subsection of the forum, but a valid argument doesn't depend on who's making it. This is not Tweeter. #scientificmethodman

It's not all that hard to find cables with relatively big differences in impedance that might lead, under certain circumstances, to noticeable sound difference.
For what @71 dB explained about impedance relations and resulting voltages(which is likely to be most cases of actual sound differences for amateur audio, beside someone messing up when soldering the pins), we can get a noticeable amount of variation in amplitude of the overall gain or just at some frequencies. By that logic, cables can indeed make a difference.
Obviously any half decent listening test would match levels before starting, and remove a bunch of cases from the table. But we already have established over the years that it is an insurmountable standard for this community. So we're stuck. They only experience BS conditions and do mistake volume differences for about anything but what they are. IMO, not clearly acknowledging the potential volume difference, is only reinforcing their beliefs that something else in the sound(that can't be measured or similar silliness) is causing their impressions.

When it comes to impedance affecting sound, instead of looking for the most out of spec cable and not even knowing how, I rely on secret ancient artifacts long forgotten by the modern audiophile civilization. Mystic tools such as "the volume knob!" and "the equalizer!". But that's me, I always do weird revolutionary stuff like measuring a few variables for the cables I purchase to make sure I got what I paid for. I admit it, I'm a bad boy.

One exception I always bring up is for some IEMs with stupidly low impedance where I would look into voltage divider or just adding resistors in series(which could count as part of the cable I guess...). Because damping is going to suck anyway, and the extra resistance might save the amp section. I did that fairly often some years back. Now I just stay clear of those IEMs that are stupid-loads™, and my nomad life is exponentially easier and more enjoyable as a result. But again, weird IEMs exist, they can be popular and many have been FOTM(I have an hypothesis about audiophiles being on the M side of SM). Swapping cables on those IEMs is likely to actually be audible. To me swapping cables is backward thinking(unless the original cable had some known defect), and not the best solution, but with some luck it could look like one solution.

Thank you for restroring my faith in this thread (otherwise, most off-topic chats resembled unorganized troll hunting over a bottle or two of merlot )

Exactly my experience: cables can matter, low-impedance IEMs (16 Ohm is a good boundary) are to be avoided for sanity.

Then if cables are a purely resistive load - with the volume matching and an ideal source - they should not matter.

But portable sources are far from ideal, and contrary to what many here beleive are engineered to sound different (somewhat similar to different flavours of different merlot vintages)

Then we can agree that the pragmatic simplicity of enjoying music with 192 or 256 mp3s and an Apple dongle is very reasonable. After all, some bottle of wine from Walmart should bring about the same effect, based on its ethanol content, as overly sophisticated vintages

P. S. Edited for typos

 

[redrol]

One time I tried every cable I have with a set of revealing IEMs. Of course this takes minutes per IEM and so my audio memory is not going to work. I ended up running a Y splitter with 2 cables connected and only used the Left from one and Right from other with one set of IEMs. This way at the very least I can try and hear a volume difference. The IEM in question has a stated impedance of 8 ohm. I heard absolutely no differences even comparing a PW Monile $550.00 USD with a no-name something included in a $28 bux set of Blon 03. I kinda wished there was some difference since the price disparity is so great, but nope!

After all, some bottle of wine from Walmart should bring about the same effect, based on its ethanol content, as overly sophisticated vintages

I'll give you this one and also because I really dislike the taste of sour grape juice. I did see some hilarious youtube videos where wine experts fall flat on their face doing taste tests. It was at that point I realized the wine industry is kind of a scam. On the other hand, give me a bottle of good scotch and I can taste that quite easily.

 

[sonitus mirus]

Thank you for restroring my faith in this thread (otherwise, most off-topic chats resembled unorganized troll hunting over a bottle or two of merlot )

Exactly my experience: cables can matter, low-impedance IEMs (16 Ohm is a good boundary) are to be avoided for sanity.

Then if cables are a purely resistive load - with the volume matching and an ideal source - they should not matter.

But portable sources are far from ideal, and contrary to what many here beleive are engineered to sound different (somewhat similar to different flavours of different merlot vintages)

Then we can agree that the pragmatic simplicity of enjoying music with 192 or 256 mp3s and an Apple dongle is very reasonable. After all, some bottle of wine from Walmart should bring about the same effect, based on its ethanol content, as overly sophisticated vintages

P. S. Edited for typos

I think most people that have provided feedback have made the assumption that if any difference is enough to be audible, it should be clearly shown through typical measurements. That has been the theme as I have understood it. That differences can be heard with various cables may well be the case with low-impedance devices, but it is not some mystery of science that has yet to be discovered.

Granted, not everyone is able to identify all of the parameters necessary to select an ideal cable for their particular applications, but referencing marketing blurbs and reading the audiophile site reviews that get paid from these marketers is not helpful.

 

[bigshot]

If you read his posts, he is incapable of measuring anything. He's just saying that because he knows that is what we're going to ask. He's a troll. He's just wasting our time running in circles coming up with unlikely explanations of why he might be hearing what he isn't hearing at all. I don't think he ever mentioned what kind of cables or what he was using the cables for. We decided for ourselves it was IEMs and specialty cables. He doesn't know what you're talking about when you talk about impedance and IEMs. He's fishing. Go ahead and ask him how he measured the difference. See what he says. He won't answer because he didn't measure anything.

Conversations go in two directions. It isn't just about the answer. You can learn a lot by looking at how a person asks the question. It's great to be eager to answer a question thoroughly, but people like this aren't looking for answers. They're looking for attention. All trolls aren't overtly antagonistic. A lot of them just are attention starved and they're looking to manipulate people into paying attention to them. I'm not into that at all. Internet forums have a lot of people who are great to communicate with. I focus on them.

 

[Davesrose]

If you read his posts, he is incapable of measuring anything. He's just saying that because he knows that is what we're going to ask. He's a troll. He's just wasting our time running in circles coming up with unlikely explanations of why he might be hearing what he isn't hearing at all. I don't think he ever mentioned what kind of cables or what he was using the cables for. We decided for ourselves it was IEMs and specialty cables. He doesn't know what you're talking about when you talk about impedance and IEMs. He's fishing. Go ahead and ask him how he measured the difference. See what he says. He won't answer because he didn't measure anything.

Conversations go in two directions. It isn't just about the answer. You can learn a lot by looking at how a person asks the question. It's great to be eager to answer a question thoroughly, but people like this aren't looking for answers. They're looking for attention. All trolls aren't overtly antagonistic. A lot of them just are attention starved and they're looking to manipulate people into paying attention to them. I'm not into that at all. Internet forums have a lot of people who are great to communicate with. I focus on them.

Still, I am amazed by the amount of people who respond to simple line level differences (which with the previous posts were about....even with given cable A or B, could have slight difference due to resistance: which if you matched with volume is completely negated). I've started responding to a YouTube channel of a 4K video reviewer who's a home enthusiast (and big enough to get early releases), but often times shows lack of knowledge about film sources, digital intermediates, film restoration, and audio codecs. Several times I've tried to correct him when he's said "I wished this disc was not TrueHD but lossless DTS-MA or Dolby Atmos". TrueHD is now the defacto lossless UHD base codec with lossless Atmos. I have tried to inform him that if the same source at same level is encoded in TrueHD or DTS-MA, they'd sound identical. It's just that sound levels go all over the place. Now with home theater system: I find I have to raise the volume quite a bit with Dolby Atmos with streaming sources....and then with UHD sources, they're at lower volume.

 

[bigshot]

He mentioned this same thing a way back in the thread and was told all this. He was asked for clarification about what cables he was comparing and how he was using and testing them and he didn't answer. Now we've looped back to one and we're back to guessing what he is talking about again. This thread is flypaper for frustration. I like you guys and you have interesting things to say. I'd rather chat with you folks about just about any topic. How was your weekend?

 

[71 dB]

If you read his posts, he is incapable of measuring anything. He's just saying that because he knows that is what we're going to ask. He's a troll.

Maybe, but replies are not only to these trolls. Some other people may read them. Give rope to a troll in a controlled way and you can make him walk backwards into his troll cave.

He's just wasting our time

No, he is not wasting our time. We are wasting our time dealing with him. I have only myself to blame and you have only yourself to blame. We could get offline and save a lot of time, but we don't. The blame is on us. He is wasting his own time, but that is not my problem.

He doesn't know what you're talking about when you talk about impedance and IEMs.

Maybe talking about impedances makes him google it and even learn something? Then again maybe not. Ignorant people are ignorant for a reason. I have learned that the only chance to have progress with an ignorant individual is patience and time. Even that fails most of the time.

Conversations go in two directions. It isn't just about the answer. You can learn a lot by looking at how a person asks the question. It's great to be eager to answer a question thoroughly, but people like this aren't looking for answers. They're looking for attention.

Why is that? The need for attention is a sign of something, maybe the feel of being overlooked/neglected for example. In reality people want understanding and acceptance, but those are hard to get. Seeking for attention is plan B and an effective way to get attention is becoming a troll.

All trolls aren't overtly antagonistic. A lot of them just are attention starved and they're looking to manipulate people into paying attention to them. I'm not into that at all. Internet forums have a lot of people who are great to communicate with. I focus on them.

Just ignore trolls then and focus on what you are here for. Let other people deal with them.

 

[71 dB]

I'd rather chat with you folks about just about any topic. How was your weekend?

Pretty good, thanks for asking! I spent time listening to the music of Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Friedrich Fasch and Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel.

How was yours? Hopefully not ruined by online trolls...

 

[Davesrose]

I'd rather chat with you folks about just about any topic. How was your weekend?

I'm treating today as another day of my weekend (since I have Indigenous People's Day/Columbus Day off). This weekend I worked on mounting an OLED TV and bookshelf speakers in my bedroom. I was amazed that the LG 55" OLED is a few bucks cheaper than Samsung QLED (even though every review site says LG OLED has best picture quality). It's also good that the area I was mounting is best for 55"....I had been using a 32" LCD TV. When trying to check out cheaper TV options at Best Buy, they all seemed to have crappy picture quality (so it seems you either go for cheapest option or go OLED).

To also stay on audio: the TV has a Dolby Atmos AI sound DSP. My bookshelf speakers kick in when the TV is set with TV and optical source. The bookshelves do add quite a bit more range. They're older Acoustic Research speakers my dad gave me, and I repaired disintegrated surround rings. They're not ported, yet they have pretty impressive bass response.

 

[bigshot]

This weekend I worked on mounting an OLED TV and bookshelf speakers in my bedroom.

That sounds like you're going to have a really good bedroom system. You may not want to get out of bed! I need to do something like that. But I have this big stupid piece of furniture that limits the size of the TV. Remember those big cabinets with doors they had for CRT TVs? I have one of those. I really should throw the thing out, but it's nice wood. It's odd that furniture goes obsolete, but this is a huge albatross. I can't figure out another use for it.

Pretty good, thanks for asking! I spent time listening to the music of Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Friedrich Fasch and Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. How was yours?

Early music like that is nice and relaxing.

I spent the weekend working on a project for the digital archive I operate. We got in hundreds and hundreds of DVDs and blu-rays of 1960s anime series. I've been cataloguing, ripping and compressing episodes to M4V. Every disk is mastered a little different. It's hard to pull individual episodes out of a 40GB chunk to make each episode a separate file. Some eps have four chapters and some have five. I found that I'd set up a conversion in handbrake and the title sequence for one would be attached to the end credits of the previous one. I finally got it all worked out. I've been ripping for a couple of months now in my spare time. When I'm done it will be a great research tool. Very little of this made it to the US. I did the same thing with a huge batch of Russian animation a few months ago. I also had volunteers in scanning books by Hokusai. We're on a Japanese kick right now.

 

[Davesrose]

That sounds like you're going to have a really good bedroom system. You may not want to get out of bed! I need to do something like that. But I have this big stupid piece of furniture that limits the size of the TV. Remember those big cabinets with doors they had for CRT TVs? I have one of those. I really should throw the thing out, but it's nice wood. It's odd that furniture goes obsolete, but this is a huge albatross. I can't figure out another use for it.

I'm lucky that for my main system, my entertainment system I bought with my first house is component areas underneath and a long glass top for a big sized TV. At the time, it was a 42" plasma....and now it could accommodate up to 85" OLED. So my main setup still is best for watching movies (also having nice 7.1.4 speakers). My bedroom setup is for watching TV right before bed: I've also noticed the 55" OLED's processors are more forgiving for old SD content than the LCD TV was.

Speaking of entertainment centers....that does remind me of my grandparent's condo in Florida: they bought it from previous owners and furniture was all from the 70s. So the central bookshelf center in the living room was gold framework and glass with areas that were gray sections. It had a 19" CRT TV (original one actually having one of the early wired remotes). When I went TV shopping with my grandmother, it still wound up being 19" TV she got: even though I kept thinking she didn't really need to keep that furniture. And then with her other house, it took many hours going to Circuit City to replace her old Sony slim Trinitron (it having a wood cabinet and very thin depth due to special CRT). It was me and the sales guy saying that there's no special order for such a thing anymore: 19" TVs just have the deep tube and black plastic (back then of course....now I'm dating myself about types of CRT).

 

[Davesrose]

I spent the weekend working on a project for the digital archive I operate. We got in hundreds and hundreds of DVDs and blu-rays of 1960s anime series. I've been cataloguing, ripping and compressing episodes to M4V. Every disk is mastered a little different. It's hard to pull individual episodes out of a 40GB chunk to make each episode a separate file. Some eps have four chapters and some have five. I found that I'd set up a conversion in handbrake and the title sequence for one would be attached to the end credits of the previous one. I finally got it all worked out. I've been ripping for a couple of months now in my spare time. When I'm done it will be a great research tool. Very little of this made it to the US. I did the same thing with a huge batch of Russian animation a few months ago. I also had volunteers in scanning books by Hokusai. We're on a Japanese kick right now.

That's neat: previously I have learned you are involved with animation resources (I kinda coincide of having been involved with medical 3D animation, photography, and now software development in the medical sector). Lately my personal projects have been maintaining databases. Interested: why M4V as your container? Seems h.264 mp4 is most universal for all platforms (though h.265 is also becoming pretty regular). Would be interesting to see these culture's animation (not familiar with Russian)...and it looks now everyone is into Asian media (I'm hearing so much about Squid Game).

 

[bigshot]

M4V and MP4 are pretty much interchangeable. It's just the format that Handbrake spits out. We archive the original file and create streamable knockdowns for inclusion in our database.

Russia has a huge animation industry and they have since the 1920s. There's an ocean of material that we know nothing about in the US. Every time I think I've seen it all, the world opens up wider and there's more to take in.

 

[Davesrose]

Russia has a huge animation industry and they have since the 1920s. There's an ocean of material that we know nothing about in the US. Every time I think I've seen it all, the world opens up wider and there's more to take in.

Interesting that's about the same time as Disney was starting. And before that, practical effects started with Méliès. At any point, were they influenced by the west? I'm familiar with some Soviet film makers who both had some western influences but had their own sensibilities. It's also neat that since cinema is over 100 years old, there tends to be a cycle of themes.