Just dont understand. How can they believe an Ethernet cable can improve sound?

[bigshot]

This journey of properly informing oneself is absolutely exhausting. Especially considering the amount of confusing information you have to wade through with one side claiming one thing then another side claiming another.

it isn't all that difficult if you simply consider the source. If someone is trying to sell you something, take what they say with a grain of salt. Realize that there's no qualification for commenting in forum threads. The people there might know even less than you do. But with some careful googling and sorting out the legit voices among the know nothings, it isn't hard at all. You need to have the desire to figure things out for yourself though. Understanding how the technology works is the best tool for separating the wheat from the chaff.

P.S. Spelling counts. If someone has multiple misspellings and typos in a single post, you know they didn't exactly work their brain up to a sweat drafting it.

 

[gregorio]

[1] This journey of properly informing oneself is absolutely exhausting. [2] Especially considering the amount of confusing information you have to wade through with one side claiming one thing then another side claiming another.

1. Well yes, it is quite exhausting, it’s a never ending journey because audio/sound covers several different scientific and engineering fields; physics (covering electromagnetism, electronics, signal transfer), acoustics, psychoacoustics, digital signal processing, etc., each of which can take years/a lifetime to fully learn. However, one doesn’t have to learn all of it because most of audio and sound is based on quite old and relatively simple science, compared with much/most cutting edge areas of science.

2. That’s one advantage we have in pro-audio (sound/music engineering for example), although there’s a great deal to learn, there’s only one side to it all! So nothing to wade through or cause confusion because of conflicting information from two opposing sides. Virtually all audiophile claims are just variations of marketing myths, long ago debunked. Even mentioning the word “audiophile” will be met with eye rolling and using it to justify some claim will be met with ridicule and/or at least the assumption of basic ignorance.

also much digital stuff, that is "clear,researched,proofen to work" and so on
few examples,
1. added Dither to a DSP (CamillaDSP in my case) at the end of the chain helps sound quality, even if some say its not needed
2. resampling changes sound (tho not sure because of dac implementation or "digital" or both)
3. phase changes of IIR filter change "soundquality" of affected frequencys
4. dac reconstruction filter matter (probably because of impulseresponse)

It should be obvious, on one side you’ve got as you say: Clear, proven and (well) researched, while on the other side there’s nothing except marketing, ignorance of basic facts, false assumptions that fly in the face of the actual facts and impressions. There no clear proofs, no research and not even any reliable evidence, therefore:

1. Yes, dither is essential during any quantisation or re-quantisation process. That’s why all ADCs have always added dither during recording, why dither is always applied as the last step of mastering and why re-quantising (over-sampling) DACs always apply dither. Adding even more dither is obviously not going to make any sort of improvement, except under very specific conditions and where you’re re-quantising to a bit depth of 16bit or lower.

2. No, it doesn’t. In fact commonly, during mixing and mastering the recording has already been resampled several times and possibly more than a dozen times.

3. Sure, anything can be designed incompetently, including filters but then competently designed filters are hardly new and are cheap to implement. Phase inconsistencies will therefore be either completely non-existent or way below audibility unless deliberately/incompetently designed otherwise.

well the thing for me staying here "persistently" was to make a point …

Which you have, but claims and arguments based on ignorance, fallacies and/or falsehoods are obviously not acceptable to science. So you have made a point but not the point you intended!

but yea everyone has their own expierences and if you have not expierenced stuff yourself its hard to believe,

No one disputes that everyone has their own experiences but of course individual’s experience does not define or even affect science or the facts. If it did, there would not be any science, for example, 1+1 would have 8 billion potentially valid answers, instead of the only one correct answer anyone with even the most basic knowledge of mathematics should know!

just like i cant believe "stuff doesnt matter" since my expierence goes into another direction..

Yes, “experience” can obviously go in all sorts of directions, if it didn’t then we would all have exactly the same experience, which obviously isn’t the case. A marketing ploy widely used in the audiophile world for around 4 decades or so, is the false assertion that experience somehow defines the actual facts and/or supersedes them. The reason this audiophile marketing ploy is still around after 40 or more years is that it’s very effective but it relies on a certain level of ignorance and gullibility, which is why it’s limited to the audiophile world and we don’t find it in all the other audio worlds/communities.

i have to say tho,
1. you have to get sensitised to differences of power supplys, absolute phase and so on
2. it helps quite alot to have a "tuned/tweaked" system already, changes get way more obvious (as overall "details" go)

That’s the problem, you do NOT “have to say” falsehoods/fallacies/marketing BS in this subforum, in fact it’s actively discouraged because this is a science discussion forum but despite all this you continue to do so?!

1. One cannot get sensitised to absolute phase or “absolute” anything else because human hearing is not absolutely perfect. We have a great deal of reliable evidence for what level of sensitivity humans actually have, going back a century or more but don’t let any of that affect whatever audiophile marketing BS you choose to believe!

2. No, it doesn’t help at all, let alone “alot”. The best “tuned/tweaked” systems are to be found in the top commercial studios but we do NOT use audiophile cables, power supplies or pretty much anything “audiophile” because such changes have no audible affect at all, let alone “way more obvious ones”!

and i should mention -again- that i dont think all "audiophiles" imagine things, specially quite similar things,

No, you should not even mention it once in a sound science discussion forum, let alone keep mentioning it “-again-”, especially when it’s already been explained to you several times why you shouldn’t!! So why do you and what “point” do you think we conclude from that?

To address the claim: You’re really not claiming that audiophiles are not humans are you? If they are humans, then they are subject to cognitive biases and perceptual errors/illusions like ALL humans. Of course, you’re feel to think/believe anything you like but that does not change this basic fact of being a human and that audiophiles are human.

for me the way more obvious logic is that things get overheared by objectivists or suboptimal testmethods and systems

How is it “more obvious logic” to effectively conclude/assume that audiophiles are not human beings? I’ve met many audiophiles and they were all human beings!

And regarding this specific claim: The most optimal systems are obviously to be found in the top commercial recording, mixing and mastering studios, where tens of millions have been spent on equipment and optimising their systems. Who do you think works at these studios, subjectivist audiophiles who believe any old audiophile marketing nonsense or educated/qualified professional engineers? Also, when testing equipment that can/will affect the quality of work and therefore the continued existence of the studio and livelihood of the engineers, do you really believe it’s “more obvious logic” that we only use sub-optimal testing methods? Your assertions of sub-optimal test methods and systems is obviously false and is clearly an example of pretty much “the way more obvious” ILLOGIC, the exact opposite of what you’re claiming, yet again!

The point/s you are “persistently” making/repeating has been very well made, though you don’t seem to realise it or even the actual point you are inadvertently making. So please do NOT keep “persistently” making it and posting false assertions, fallacies and examples of illogical reasoning to support it, because each of these is unacceptable and insulting to science (and therefore this forum), let alone all of them together, repeatedly!!

G

 

[bigshot]

If home audio is your hobby, I would expect that you have enough of an interest in it to expend a little energy into figuring out how it works.

 

[71 dB]

This journey of properly informing oneself is absolutely exhausting. Especially considering the amount of confusing information you have to wade through with one side claiming one thing then another side claiming another.

Here is one hint: People who write hz, Khz, db etc. are probably not those you want to believe. Instead believe people who correctly (pay attention to lower and upper cases) write Hz, kHz, dB etc. because those people are likely to have studied audio related topics in school and know what they are talking about.

This is an exhausting journey for everyone and we all keep learning something*, so don't feel disencouraged. Take it as a challenge instead.

* For example I didn't know 5-6 years ago when I came to this forum that people hear/interpret differently from each other binaural spatial cues. Now I know and I also know why some people like cross-feed with headphones and other people don't. What I don't know or understand is why people are different in this respect, but perhaps someday I discover a missing piece of information that helps me with that.

 

[A Jedi]

"Research is hard". That right there is the problem with the world.

I don't want to put in the effort to educate myself so I'll believe whatever I feel like believing regardless if it's right or wrong.

It's a wonder our species has survived this long.

 

[castleofargh]

This journey of properly informing oneself is absolutely exhausting. Especially considering the amount of confusing information you have to wade through with one side claiming one thing then another side claiming another.

+1.
And most of the time nether side should claim anything.
But as soon as you find long standing battles, you pretty much know that it's a nothing burger. That really is all you have to consider on audio forums IMO.
If the impact wasn't something rare, made up, or stupidly tiny, someone would have pulled out his fingers from his butt at some point and given some reasonable demonstration of audibility. And if that demonstration was well done and documented like it is for so many things, people like me would just look at the presented evidence and accept it as something probably right.

What allows something to stretch forever and have armies of pros and against, is lack of any solid facts(something being a fact when it's demonstrated and not when someone claims it is!!!). For something not easy to find, the only conclusive results have to come from those who claim they do hear stuff. Because if I don't think there should be an audible difference between Ethernet cable of all things, I test myself(measurements and/or controlled test) and fail to show audibility, I have proved nothing. I'd have to test all devices and all listeners before being able to claim there is no possible audibility. An impossible task.
While the loud mouths who gloat about night and day everything, all they have to do is do and openly share one or 2 kinds of reasonably controlled experiment to strongly support their claims. If they never do, that in itself is often strong evidence that they should really learn when to **** instead of claiming what they have no proof of.

Of course the can be reasons why people don't test something:
Maybe the matter is extremely hard to test(like audible burn in, time is necessary for something to have a chance to happen in the driver, but time must not happen for the listener or memories will inevitably become unreliable. It creates a paradox for the experimenter).
Maybe the question isn't that hard to test and people are just lazy.
Maybe they already tried and failed so they're quiet about it, or they blame blind testing of all the flaws they will never admit for their own uncontrolled sighted impressions(typical behavior TBH).
Maybe they don't try to find proofs because deep down they know it's all BS. But now they have taken a public stand, they have invested serious money and don't know how to back down(sunk cost fallacy).
Maybe they're so full of themselves they really believe they're always right. You know, the type of person who always finds someone or something to blame for his own mistakes? I cannot name names, even less so as a modo, but they exist and I see them. That's the type to handle cognitive dissonance so poorly he's got to find some escape no matter how nonsensical. To quote Shaggy, "it wasn't me".
Maybe they're really terrible with anything technical, rigorous, and they just can't handle testing, the same way I freeze in front of convoluted administrative papers. But then what business do such people have arguing about what's factual or not?

Did I forget some possibilities? I think this is accounting for most scenarios.


I've been and am in your shows most of the time. It's very sad for me but audiophile forums haven't answered my questions. Of course I wouldn't ask a question before trying hard to figure things out with google. I RTFM, and I even do simple experiments myself when I know how. So my remaining questions did tend to be quite complicated or hyper specific.
For more typical questions, google and this forum do have many of the answers. It's trying to swim through all the noise that's hell. This section along with the help section have 2 very small but faithful groups of people volunteering to give some of their time and try to help. Don't hesitate to try that. Worse case scenario, nobody replies.


I think this is hand down the worse hobby for someone curious about facts. I've discussed the emotions from a painting while drunk, with more rationality than some people here discuss digital audio, fidelity, or human hearing limits(if they even acknowledge that a limit exists... many actually don't).

 

[bigshot]

The truth rarely lies halfway between two opposing opinions. People can have different criteria for judging and come up with different preferences, but when it comes to facts, it is what it is. When someone denies facts with no solid evidence to the contrary, then denies even the means of determining facts, you know that they aren't the one who cares about the truth.

One thing you missed in your list is someone who is willing to deliberately twist facts and gleefully slide down slippery slopes into logical fallacies without even realizing it. That is the kind that makes me shake my head, because it's so extreme, it's hard to believe someone could lack that much self awareness.

 

[A Jedi]

The one glaring problem with testing equipment is that not a single test is done with a musical signal with the results taken from a transducer. That's a blatant issue with amp measurements - there's never a reactive load (speaker) involved. And the signal is always either a single frequency or two frequencies (IMD) rather than a complex mix like a song would be.

I want to see measurements of equipment under real world conditions.

Having said that, audiophile switches are a con.

 

[WoodyLuvr]

The one glaring problem with testing equipment is that not a single test is done with a musical signal with the results taken from a transducer. That's a blatant issue with amp measurements - there's never a reactive load (speaker) involved. And the signal is always either a single frequency or two frequencies (IMD) rather than a complex mix like a song would be.

I want to see measurements of equipment under real world conditions.

Having said that, audiophile switches are a con.

Test signals are not made up nor arbitrarily pulled from out of thin air and it is quite common for real loads or reactive loads to be used when testing.

For example, simple tones like sine waves and other complex testing signals (e.g. square waves) are the actual building blocks of all the sounds and music that we hear around us. Using such pure tones and signals is also much easier to obtain repeatable results and measurements. Plus, no one would ever agree upon which music should be used for testing, unless all music were to be used which is not very timely.

Do you have an issue with automobile performance tests being conducted on race tracks and/or testing courses which is far from real world conditions? Why should an audio equipment testing bench be any different?

 

[bigshot]

Listening tests, particularly those dealing with audio quality (as opposed to fidelity), are generally performed with recorded music.

 

[castleofargh]

The one glaring problem with testing equipment is that not a single test is done with a musical signal with the results taken from a transducer. That's a blatant issue with amp measurements - there's never a reactive load (speaker) involved. And the signal is always either a single frequency or two frequencies (IMD) rather than a complex mix like a song would be.

I want to see measurements of equipment under real world conditions.

Having said that, audiophile switches are a con.

This is one of those discussion where I can agree or disagree and be correct both times because it really depends on a lot of variables, starting with what we're really trying to measure.
It's like saying we can't measure everything, it's both true and the dumbest argument an audiophile can have depending on what is being discussed. I agree that at least some tests should involve actual music and actual listening conditions. For example as a consumer of music, I have almost no interest in crosstalk, or THD unless they're stupidly bad and tell me not to purchase that device. I'd much prefer something based on multitone or even music(which does exists and some test do suggest better predictability with listeners preferences). But that stuff isn't(yet?) a standard spec or something anyone can do(I for one still don't know how and it pisses me off).

Anyway, using real gear, music and listening conditions, sometimes it's not too much trouble, most of the time it is. I tried as much as possible to test my own stuff right at the headphone/IEM with microphones because that way I had data on my listening level about my actual experience instead of how clean the chipset in my DAC could be in a lab, and instead of some BS ideal when the amp outputs 13V into no load but my use requires 0.5V into 300ohm or 0.2V into 20-ish ohm balanced armature.
But beside FR, the room noises alone swamps my tests with crap. Putting egg boxes on the walls can't fix environment noises. Now if you're rich, maybe your panic room can double as an anechoic chamber for fun? But otherwise, you miss most of the stuff below30, 40, maybe even 50dB SPL. And if like me you tend to listen to music around 60 to 70dB SPL most of the time, what remains to cleanly measure doesn't allow much more than FR from the full scale signal. I certainly wouldn't learn anything about jitter from using my mic.

Another big issue in term of standards, is how once you select a real headphone, IEM or a song for your test, you have to stick with that forever. Other people must use the same or your data can't compare to theirs. Then what happens to people who don't have loads and sensitivity like those?
Sadly I don't see a simple solution that would please and help everybody or even just most people.



Now If we have a very specific thing we wish to know, smart people can look into it and often enough find a testing protocol for that. Some dudes have machines to count electrons and know their spin, while I fear a passing car if I'm using a microphone.
For this thread, There aren't too many ways about it. We either discuss the sound we can notice and only a controlled listening experiment can try to disprove the null hypothesis for some subjects under some condition. Even that needs to be properly considered, are we checking audibility in a normal room? At a nightclub? Or in the quietest place on earth? The answer might change depending on such conditions(well, not if there is nothing audible anyway from switching an Ethernet cable^_^).
The conditions of a test are very important to define when the result applies, and all the people who declare to know better thank to not paying any attention to their listening conditions are horribly wrong and ignorant. No amount of BS rhetoric can change that fact.

If on the other hand we're not concerned about audibility but only signal, then there will be some measurement at some magnitude that will show a change from placing a rock on the Ethernet switch. Everybody can accept that as a fact I think. The conversation becomes not about any change existing, but about who gives a crap? Usually the magnitude helps us decide, but once again, some extreme audiophiles will still think that any change is audible and that they can perceive what machines cannot(start talking about soundstage that they don't understand but are so proud of).

All that crap to say, the question matters more than most people think(even more when talking measurements), and sticking to answering it instead of other easier stuff is all the challenge and what audiophiles almost never do. Thus people spending thousands on short Ethernet cables to allegedly improve sound, then thinking it was absolutely worth it based on already thinking it when doing the purchase and never changing their mind no matter what until the day they die. I won't argue that it's never ever possible for some audible change on some setup under some conditions with some cables to occur. I will however confidently say that the money would have had more impact used almost anywhere else(most likely that would include non audio stuff, food, a weekend at a lake, new shoes, a giant bag of small magnets to build stuff with kids or without kids...).

 

[A Jedi]

All amp measurements I've ever seen were done with a set resistive load. I want to see FR, THD, S/N, IMD, etc. done with a reactive load.

As for music, it doesn't matter. Anything is more complex than a 1K sine.

 

[bigshot]

I agree with A Jedi, I don't ascribe to the theory that different types of music are any different when it comes to fidelity. Symphonic music sounds just as bad with low fidelity as pop music does. The sophistication of the music doesn't mean it's more complex to reproduce. The only thing I can think of that is a little more difficult to reproduce with high fidelity is piano music, because it's very revealing when it comes to timing errors. But a test tone is even more revealing than that.

If something can reproduce tones accurately, it should be able to reproduce any kind of music. Music is much more forgiving than tones are in general.

 

[gregorio]

The one glaring problem with testing equipment is that not a single test is done with a musical signal with the results taken from a transducer.

That’s not a “glaring problem”, that’s the glaring advantage!

Firstly, which musical signal should we use? Obviously you’ve got the issue Castle mentioned, where comparisons with others’ measurements would require exactly the same recording/master but also; tonal/diatonic music is always in a “key”. Now maybe a particular key excites certain distortions in a piece of equipment, or maybe it doesn’t. If it does, then it’s likely most of those distortions will be harmonically related to that key but then so is what’s in the music, keys/tonality is based on harmonic relationships, so how do we separate harmonic distortion from exactly the same harmonic content? EG. A piece of music in the key of say A Major (440Hz) will have a great deal of 880Hz harmonic content, how do we separate that 880Hz harmonic content from 880Hz 2nd Harmonic distortion? It’s possible but the difference is not obvious. If on the other hand we use a 440Hz sine wave as the test, then any 880Hz (or any other freq content) must be distortion, very obvious. The problem with using a 440Hz sine wave (or the more common 1kHz) is that it may not excite certain distortions but that’s the same problem with a piece of music in a Key that doesn’t excite certain distortions. In some situations we use a 30 tone test signal, in some we use white noise which contains all the freqs at the same time, so we cover everything but has the problem of differentiating the test signal from the distortion again and in some situations we use a sine sweep test signal, that covers all the freqs but not at the same time, which makes differentiation easier.

The other main type of distortion is noise and this presents a similar but potentially more difficult problem when using music as the test signal. Although you typically don’t notice it, almost every recording has a varying noise floor, how do we identify the noise created by a DAC or amp from the noise floor of the recording that’s variable and is probably an order of magnitude (or several) higher than the DAC or amp noise floor to start with? Again, it would be possible but not easy, you’d have to jump through some hoops and it would be easy to make mistakes.

I want to see measurements of equipment under real world conditions.

That raises another whole bunch of problems. For example, you can’t get “results taken from a transducer”. The output of a transducer (HPs or speakers) is of course sound and the only way to measure sound is with a transducer (a microphone). In other words, the results would have to be taken from 2 transducers, the speaker and the measurement mic (and of course the mic’s pre-amp). And we haven’t even mentioned room acoustics!

The real “elephant in the room” (excuse the pun) is scale. It’s a huge issue in the audiophile world because almost all audiophile marketing seeks to confuse and minimise it, even some audiophile sites that sell themselves as measurement based, objective sites! Take for example room acoustics, in a typical audiophile listening room a freq in a music recording can be affected by 20dB or more. Let’s say our peak listening level is 85dBSPL and we have a say 100Hz fundamental in a music recording that’s at 50dBSPL, due to room acoustics it might actually end up at the listening position as 70dBSPL or 30dBSPL. However, the noise from a DAC or amp at say -115dBFS would be at -30dBSPL, that’s probably 70dB (a few thousand times) below the noise floor of the listening room, it’s several hundred times below the noise floor of a world class recording studio, around 4 times below the world’s quietest, 6 shell, anechoic chamber and even given a top anechoic chamber, it’s about 30 times below the threshold of human hearing anyway, not to mention the self-noise of whatever speaker you’re using or the fact that the noise floor of the recording will also be around 45dBSPL (but might be 20dB in some exceptional cases). The audiophile solution to all this is to ignore room acoustics or apply a little basic treatment, rank our -115dB DAC example as middling to poor, argue a good DAC with say -140dB of jitter noise/distortion is night and day better, we should all buy femto clocks if we’re not deaf and that the real problem is digital filters which aren’t perfect beyond about -160dB.

It’s just so ludicrous it’s hard to know where to start, besides just spluttering and laughing! Which in fact is exactly what most engineers do when faced with many audiophile claims.

I understand the logic of what you’re requesting but it doesn’t take into account the scale of the issues involved. The relatively massive issues of acoustics, the smaller but still relatively huge issues of transducer inaccuracies/inefficiencies, verses the differences at ridiculously low levels between modern DACs (for example). Your suggestion would end up with measurements between a moderately poor DAC and the best DAC which were all effectively the same, because they would fall within the random error of just 1 transducer, let alone 2 in series. It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest different ways to objectively measure microbes but from 10ft away, in a room filled with balloons, using two dirty magnifying glasses isn’t one of them.

G

 

[A Jedi]

As I said above, any music is way more complex than a 1K sine. But since we're talking about audiophiles here, pick some Chesky disc and a song off it and just keep using that.

As for transducers, while taking a measurement of what the transducer ultimately produces would be ideal, their high distortion would make the measurement pointless.

What I propose is measuring the output of the amp at the speaker terminals as usual but with the speaker connected (measurement leads are in parallel to transducer). This way, the amp has to deal with a reactive load but we don't have to worry about transducer or mic distortion.