[SP Wild]

Beer....one too many.

 

[tds101]

Why do some people bring threads back from the dead???
 
If you feel a cable does something/nothing to make a difference in the SQ of WHATEVER that's great. But trying to convince people of the pros/cons is a waste of time. Really, why bring up something that will only incite riots - again???
 
Really, go start a flame war someplace else - we've had more than enough of them here lately,......................

 

[JaZZ]

 
Quote:

Sonic properties of cables are considered to be below the hearing treshold for a good reason. New methods or complex signals can't disprove numerous DBTs.

You know that negative DBT results prove nothing, so there's nothing to be disproved. What would you say if the measured deviations are clearly above the established hearing thresholds? Would you still reject the new methods and their results? No interest at all?
 

"Science hasn't figured it out yet, but I have" is a real classic.

And this objection is a classic. It serves for belittling new approaches in the sense of «we already know enough to be sure» and is as old as science itself. (The «...but I have» is an unnecessary and unscientific addendum serving for personal discreditation. It shows how subjective and biased [wanna-be] scientists often are.)

 
Quote:

Jazz - The point is not that the toaster requires heat, the point is that it requires a cable capable of supply the required current demand, a simple electrical connection.
 
Do you think your headphones are that different? You mention a special signal shape, but it is just an electrical connection between two components.

 
An electrical connection – a cable – is an electroacoustic component with its specific properties. A toaster doesn't pose specific requirements in terms of signal accuracy, as it doesn't receive a signal at all, just electrical power for producing heat. Even a slight voltage variation doesn't hurt the quality of the product, not to speak of the AC frequency. There's no direct analogy between an interconnect or headphone cable and a toaster. High sonic fidelity is dependent on high signal accuracy. And although a cable is the component with the least corruption potential behind sound transducer and source and amp, its quality is not completely negligible.
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[cer]

Quote:

You know that negative DBT results prove nothing, so there's nothing to be disproved.

Are you serious? That's enough for me. No use banging my head against the wall.

 

[JaZZ]

Are you serious? That's enough for me. No use banging my head against the wall.

You mean it's a case for the famous common sense? 

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[sgrossklass]

As far as I'm concerned, the most outlandish claims regarding the influence of cables seem to come from people who have NO background in electrical engineering or psychoacoustics, or even scientific methodology in general. Or those who want to sell ¢abl€$, obviously.
 
Explaining the properties of cables has never been any rocket science, certainly not at audio frequencies and typical lengths for home audio. A bit of resistance here, some capacitance and inductance there, a pinch of topology, nothing too dramatic. Even when they easily do make a difference worth noting (read: phono MM), basic electrical engineering is quite sufficient.
 
If I had just blown $1000 on a stupid cable, I'd feel cheated if it didn't make a perceptible difference. Heck, I'd probably feel cheated anyway as that amount of money could have gotten me a nice new monitor, world-class mechanical keyboard (or two) and potentially a pair of spare cans, too - and you can bet that a lot more man-hours of honest hard-working people went into those.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Quote:

 

You know that negative DBT results prove nothing, so there's nothing to be disproved. What would you say if the measured deviations are clearly above the established hearing thresholds? Would you still reject the new methods and their results? No interest at all?
 


 

A series of negative DBTs prove that there is no difference between products. If a new medicine is found to have no clear benefits over a placebo after DBTs, it will not be passed for use as a medicine. The same should be true for cables. Unless the cable passes DBTs, the manufacturer should only be able to sell it based on quality of construction and style, not claimed 'sound benefits'.

 

[xnor]

About the MLS stuff:
 
These measurements are a research project and forum members posted a couple of concerns / problems with the measurements they published.
 
loosely translated from the stereoplay forum,
a post by Dalibor Beric, editorial staff:
 
The measured Van Den Hul-cable has very low resistance (which results in a very high damping factor). This exceeded the measuring accuracy and we got the wrong numbers. Therefore the measurement result clearly is invalid. All we can do is apologize - which we hereby do and also will in the magazine.
...
I also want to emphasize that that these measurements are a research project and therefore: a) are not part of the rating, b) are not comparable to our standard measurements. bla bla, our standard measurements however are valid, bla bla, don't jump to conclusions, bla bla, it can take quite a few month for measurement methods to become "water-proof" ...
---
 
So what can we learn from this? Don't jump to conclusions. Don't post vague stuff like "somebody did some new measurement that showed something". et cetera.
 
 
Oh and a forum member which seems to know what he's talking about explains that their method is severely flawed and is quite upset:
 
We've clearly pointed out that using this method to detect nonlinear distortions, as a matter of principle, is inapplicable. MLS requires linearity of the system under consideration. How you can hit on an idea like using this method for detecting nonlinear behavior is still an unexplained secret of stereoplay.
---
 
hehe, this guy posted a couple of epic replies making them look pretty stupid 

 

 

[JaZZ]

About the MLS stuff:
 
These measurements are a research project and forum members posted a couple of concerns / problems with the measurements they published.
 
loosely translated from the stereoplay forum,
a post by Dalibor Beric, editorial staff:
 
The measured Van Den Hul-cable has very low resistance (which results in a very high damping factor). This exceeded the measuring accuracy and we got the wrong numbers. Therefore the measurement result clearly is invalid. All we can do is apologize - which we hereby do and also will in the magazine.
...
I also want to emphasize that that these measurements are a research project and therefore: a) are not part of the rating, b) are not comparable to our standard measurements. bla bla, our standard measurements however are valid, bla bla, don't jump to conclusions, bla bla, it can take quite a few month for measurement methods to become "water-proof" ...
---
So what can we learn from this? Don't jump to conclusions. Don't post vague stuff like "somebody did some new measurement that showed something". et cetera.

 
After all they have backed it up with some reasoning. Note that I haven't displayed their measurements as prove for anything. In science nothing is certain until the tests are repeated several times and the results are confirmed.
 
 

Oh and a forum member which seems to know what he's talking about explains that their method is severely flawed and is quite upset:
 
We've clearly pointed out that using this method to detect nonlinear distortions, as a matter of principle, is inapplicable. MLS requires linearity of the system under consideration. How you can hit on an idea like using this method for detecting nonlinear behavior is still an unexplained secret of stereoplay.

Now it's you who's jumping to shaky conclusions: «...a forum member which seems to know what he's talking about...»! 

.

 

[JaZZ]

A series of negative DBTs prove that there is no difference between products. If a new medicine is found to have no clear benefits over a placebo after DBTs, it will not be passed for use as a medicine. The same should be true for cables. Unless the cable passes DBTs, the manufacturer should only be able to sell it based on quality of construction and style, not claimed 'sound benefits'.

There's a decisive difference between medical blind tests and cable blind tests. Medical tests take care to create no extraordinary circumstances which could influence the behavior of the participants. Even the fact that drugs are administered to them can have an effect: therefore the need for placebos. Apart from that they live their usual everyday life.
 
In audio blind tests we have the opposite: the participants are at the mercy of a clinical situation, very different from their usual music-listening environment. Being blinded is one of the components that may have some imortance, another one is an unfamiliar system and unfamiliar acoustics. A third critical component is the competitive test situation itself, and depending on the methodology the latter may pose severe problems, especially in the case of random samples.
 
So the two fields are not comparable.
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[xnor]

Quote:

Now it's you who's jumping to shaky conclusions: «...a forum member which seems to know what he's talking about...»! 

 
Why? What he wrote is true and I wrote he seems to know, not that he knows everything.
Are you trying to confuse me or to distract attention?
 
Causing confusion would make sense, looking at your post with a very vague description of these (invalid) measurements, and countering with back references to that post, or hints you dropped on quantum mechanics, or things we don't know about ..
 

 

[JohnFerrier]

Seems like this strange phenomena with cable audiblity would generate research interest at a university.
 
Anyone aware of any research going on with regards to this?
 
-
 
Perhaps, a compilation of physic papers with mention of work to be done regarding an unexplained synergy between cables and "audiophile"?

 

[Prog Rock Man]

There was a major incident in the UK a while back when a drug test went horribly wrong and some died or were very unwell. That test, as many are, was carried out in the full knowledge of the participants, in a hospital, whilst they were being observed. So some drug blind tests are under the same conditions as hifi/cable ones. 
 

 

[Coupe]

The same way you convince people the chiropractors are a rip off.

 

[JaZZ]

 
Why? What he wrote is true and I wrote he seems to know, not that he knows everything.
Are you trying to confuse me or to distract attention?
 

Of course a bit of everything.

 However, «...a forum member which seems to know what he's talking about...» is anything but a convincing argument. – In turn I could tell of two respected persons who have passed cable blind-tests. It's just that one of them I asked to get involved in the discussion doesn't want to. That's really true (promised!), but of course not an argument with much weight around here.
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