[Andrew_WOT]

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/headphone-cable-measurements-part-one
 
The bottom line
 
Quote:

Originally posted by Tyll
 
Do I see anything that might be characterized as an audible feature due to the different cables in the measurement? Nope. Nada. Zilch.

 

[x838nwy]

Nice find. But he also says that his equipment aren't really there to analyse cables.

Having said that, I think what he measured is sensible though - more focused towards what you end up hearing.

Since a lot of people feel cables make a difference, it might be an idea to focus on those differnces we hear, think about how we might measure those through this rig.

 

[wolfetan44]

Interesting.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Quote:

Interesting.

Nothing really new as it has been done in the past http://en.goldenears.net/1414.

 

[wolfetan44]

Quote:

Quote:

Interesting.

Nothing really new as it has been done in the past http://en.goldenears.net/1414.

I've never seen it done by a pro though, now I've seen two!

 

[Speedskater]

Now that is one dumb way to test a cable.

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Quote:

Now that is one dumb way to test a cable.

Sounds like you have some clever idea on how to do it right, care to share?

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Sounds like you have some clever idea on how to do it right, care to share?

 
I think what he's trying to say is that if you want to try and see what effect a cable may be having on the signal passing through it, it would be more prudent to look directly at the signal that's passed through the cable rather than by way of the acoustical output of a transducer on a dummy head.
 
se

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Quote:

 
I think what he's trying to say is that if you want to try and see what effect a cable may be having on the signal passing through it, it would be more prudent to look directly at the signal that's passed through the cable rather than by way of the acoustical output of a transducer on a dummy head.
 
se

But if the purpose of recabling is to achieve "acoustic" effect, isn't measuring that effect the most appropriate method?
 
And this exactly what Tyll says in conclusion "Do I see anything that might be characterized as an audible feature due to the different cables in the measurement? Nope. Nada. Zilch."

 

[paradoxper]

Quote:

But if the purpose of recabling is to achieve "acoustic" effect, isn't measuring that effect the most appropriate method?
 
And this exactly what Tyll says in conclusion "Do I see anything that might be characterized as an audible feature due to the different cables in the measurement? Nope. Nada. Zilch."

Sure, but Tyll also addresses the fact that using measurements on his headphone measurement system is plain wrong.
 
"I've got enough experience measuring things that I know measuring the differences cables make on my headphone measurement system is just the wrong way to go about it. However, I get the request to measure different headphone cables all the time, so I figure at some point I just needed to do it."
 
So salt these results.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

But if the purpose of recabling is to achieve "acoustic" effect, isn't measuring that effect the most appropriate method?
 
And this exactly what Tyll says in conclusion "Do I see anything that might be characterized as an audible feature due to the different cables in the measurement? Nope. Nada. Zilch."

 
The debate has generally been centered around whether or not the cables themselves have an audible effect on the signal. And in that case, measuring the cable itself would be the better route. I mean, you wouldn't want to try and measure say the harmonic distortion of an amplifier by looking at the acoustical output of a headphone or loudspeaker.
 
se

 

[Andrew_WOT]

Quote:

I mean, you wouldn't want to try and measure say the harmonic distortion of an amplifier by looking at the acoustical output of a headphone or loudspeaker.
 
se

And why not, at a high level isn't that the ultimate goal, as a non tech savvy user of the system why would I care about some "better" internal measurements, just serve me something that sounds better. For an amp designer this would be an important criteria but 90% of amp users wouldn't even know how to properly interpret these results.
Same goes for cable users, how many buy them based on better conductivity criteria or what else?

 

[Speedskater]

Acoustic measurements are always of rather rather low resolution.  Just touching the headphones (let alone removing them from the chamber and working  on them) adds lots of uncontrolled variables. Getting some resistors, capacitors and inductors and making an equivalent model of the headphone will give repeatable high resolution results.  Stereophile magazine does this with an equivalent speaker model for testing amplifiers.

 

[x838nwy]

Okay, i think i understand what some of you guys are saying - it seems what's being measured is the combined result of a number of variables including some that may overshadow the differences arising through the cables alone.

What i meant was, what would be the point o say measuring nF differences if it does not end up being audible? Having thought about it further, i think i replied too soon. May be FR and impulse response plots do not represent all that we hear from our headphones.

I hope a wiser man than I can come up with a way to measure/test cables and have the results correlate with the headphone's output though. That'd be awesome.

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

Next installment is up: Measuring Headphone Cables Wrap-Up