[bfreedma]

Hiding behind punctuation???

I think that's a new low. I'm not sure how much more pathetic your responses can get; now all I feel is pity.

Have a nice day.

I thought you didn't have a clue when I started reading your posts. Thanks for confirming it.

You have absolutely nothing to offer and have directly stated that you abhor and don't trust Sound Science. I suppose if being a low level troll is your objective, you can mark that as complete.

Or

You could produce some actual evidence that properly made cables sound audibly different. Quick note before the inevitable happens - yes, you can measure differences in cables built with different metals/alloys. Those differences (in any reasonable cable length) are so far below the threshold of the extremes of human hearing that they are irrelevant to a discussion of audible impact.

Please take this subjective garbage back to the Cables, Power, Green Markers and Unicorns subforum where it belongs. Right next to the discussions of audiophile Ethernet, another absurd and easily debunked topic that audiophiles pay absurd prices for the right to be lied to by a manufacturer who can't and won't show any evidence that their product does anything.

 

[LanceSaintPaul]

Always use the pedant tense.

 

[tjkohli]

ou could produce some actual evidence that properly made cables sound audibly different. Quick note before the inevitable happens - yes, you can measure differences in cables built with different metals/alloys. Those differences (in any reasonable cable length) are so far below the threshold of the extremes of human hearing that they are irrelevant to a discussion of audible impact.

I did post evidence however, and some non-believers scream heresy and choose to ignore it.

To be fair — I am a firm believer that copper = copper = copper no matter if it's a $5 or a $500 cable. And silver = silver = silver.
But my only argument is copper ≠ silver.

 

[BS5711]

I am not trying to be a hater just putting forward what seems really obvious to me, no offence intended.

The problem is the evidence that you see as so compelling really isn’t.

All other details aside, you described how the copper cable really brought the mids forward and yet your graph actually shows essentially no meaningful change through the mids at all.

If the subjective observations don’t match your objective tests how can that be seen as evidence of anything ?

 

[tjkohli]

brought the mids forward and yet your graph actually shows essentially no meaningful change through the mids at all.

I didn't say that it "brought the mids forward" — in fact I made no reference to the mids at all. I mentioned that:

• the copper is warmer (greater low-mid bass, indicated in the test FQ)
• the copper has less sparkle (as indicated by the dips in upper FQ)

I apologize if I wasn't clear earlier, but my test indeed mirrors what I hear. I hear a slightly warmer sound with slightly less sparkle with copper (or, to speak the inverse, the silver is colder and has slightly more sparkle).

 

[BS5711]

I didn't say that it "brought the mids forward" — in fact I made no reference to the mids at all. I mentioned that:

I own otherwise identical Copper and Silver-plated Copper Meze cables for my Meze Liric and I can tell a huge difference between them. The copper brings out the mids and sounds warmer, while the silver brings out more detail and feels brighter. It's so much of a difference that I keep both cables on my desk and swap between them from time to time.

 

[tjkohli]

I apologize — that was a typo. I meant to say lower-mids. I edited my message.

 

[BS5711]

I didn't say that it "brought the mids forward" — in fact I made no reference to the mids at all. I mentioned that:

• the …..,
• the copper has less sparkle (as indicated by the dips in upper FQ)

Do you mean the massive 35db dip ?

That isn’t the cable, no cable is going to make a 35db dip anywhere.

 

[BS5711]

I apologize — that was a typo. I meant to say lower-mids. I edited my message.

To suit the graphs perhaps, who knows.

 

[tjkohli]

I performed another test — what changed from last time:

• 2 runs of each (1x copper, 1x silver, 1x copper, 1x silver)
• Installed foam windscreen on mic
• Pushed mic into headphone, aligned headphone cup to be perpendicular to mic
• Increased amp volume to 0.0dB

I did not get the peaks this time, perhaps as a result of the windscreen on the mic, but the increased low-mid bass is very clear, as well as a slight drop-off in upper treble.

 

[tjkohli]

who knows

I know.

And I'll indulge you for a second — what would I stand to gain from this? I literally was bringing forward my experience which is the same as OPs. If you refuse to believe it, I suggest you either bring forward proof that they're the same, or visit another thread.

Negativity and pessimism are not welcome here.

 

[BS5711]

I know.

And I'll indulge you for a second — what would I stand to gain from this? I literally was bringing forward my experience which is the same as OPs. If you refuse to believe it, I suggest you either bring forward proof that they're the same, or visit another thread.

Negativity and pessimism is not welcome here.

Unfortunately on the internet nobody knows about anyone so saying you know doesn’t present much of an argument. The best thing you can do is present more and better evidence which you are now attempting, nice one.

Have you read the science forum much, it is pretty much chock full of negativity resulting from arguments very much like this one.

I dip in occasionally because some of it is interesting but I generally keep my distance because I dislike all the negativity despite that is what you perceive from my comments. My comments to you here are out of academic interest only on this matter not because I have some agenda to try and prove you or anyone right or wrong.

I personally don’t think shoving a microphone into an open cup of a headphone and moving the arrangement around to change cables is an especially robust test procedure but frankly that is just my instinct, perhaps it is a legit procedure and you have discovered something that more robust science hasn’t.

Anyway, I don’t want to argue with you, just offering an opinion which you had to expect would happen, good luck with this.

 

[VNandor]

@tjkohli I really admire that you actually put in time and effort into this but you should consider doing a proper test. I already outlined why the method that was originally suggested is unreliable. If i understand you correctly, you think that a difference in the conductors' material must cause a difference in sound. I propose that as long as the voltage delivered to the headphones by the different cables are the "same" (similar enough) it doesn't matter if the voltage comes from an aluminum or a silver one. Could we agree on that? I think I happen to have access to silver cables, however, they are for making connections between line level inputs/outputs. I could easily do a loopback test with these eventually if you can't get around testing the headphone cables for yourself.

By the way, there's a test method called the '"null test". In this case, it could be performed by recording the output of the headphone amp by using the copper cable first, then the silver one. In essence, these signals can be subtracted from each other by inverting one of them, then summing it together. The sum is going to contain the difference between these recordings. If they were identical, the sum would be complete silence. I hope this method makes sense to you? I used to do this with audio diffmaker ~10 years ago which is a similar program to deltwave just older and presumably worse as I remember audio diffmaker crashing 9 out of 10 times on my machine. I'm sure deltwave lets the user to do a null test as well, not just a frequency response comparison which would hopefully leave no doubt about resolution, soundstage, etc...

 

[castleofargh]

I performed another test — what changed from last time:

• 2 runs of each (1x copper, 1x silver, 1x copper, 1x silver)
• Installed foam windscreen on mic
• Pushed mic into headphone, aligned headphone cup to be perpendicular to mic
• Increased amp volume to 0.0dB

I did not get the peaks this time, perhaps as a result of the windscreen on the mic, but the increased low-mid bass is very clear, as well as a slight drop-off in upper treble.

We're getting somewhere, the acoustic abyss in the treble on the first graph isn't showing up on this one(having one somewhere else would have led to the same conclusion that the cable had nothing to do with it). Several of us were already pretty sure a cable didn't have(and certainly shouldn't be sold if they did) the ability to create that anyway, but now the last graph suggests that the laws of physics probably stand when it comes to this specific detail. That's already a step in the right direction. Half the "clear" evidence is gone with just another run of measurement. That's the type of stuff we do often get with measurement methods that are less than ideally controlled and why I insisted on trying not to move the headphone, which I fully recognize as easier said than done.
It's another one of those "we do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy".

About refusing to believe, I can't talk for others, but I've done my fair share of amateurish measurements, and as I said, while I'm actually onboard with the possibility of audible difference from cable swap under particular conditions or at least one extremely weird and bad cable, what you've showed us didn't match my most likely expectations for FR variations caused by cables. And when @FunkyBassMan brought up the massive treble dip as evidence, my immediate thought wasn't that I was a "non-believer". It was that he had little understanding about electrical stuff.
I don't have any silver cable, so I can't test that. I have no plan to get some, because my own experience with silver cables has been one of regret. Ironically, I have silver for soldering jobs (to try lead-free options as I'm making cables at my desk in the bedroom... not great, not terrible), and soldering wires with silver is a freaking PITA to use.
This is obviously just some random and insignificant stories and for all you know I'm a werewolf with an agenda. But I hope it's enough to explain why, even though I have some cheap amateur tools for measurements, I have nothing to show for silver vs copper cables. If we get into the sound of silver vs stainless steel spoons, then I might be able to participate more actively.


Mind sharing the 2 series of REW measurements with me, and whatever else you might decide to get? If the files are too heavy, forget it, it's just so I can fool around for visibility's sake.

 

[MrHaelscheir]

I haven't had a chance to read through this whole thread yet, but I'd like to contribute my in-ear headphone cable measurements video (timestamps on the scrub bar and description) to this discussion if you haven't already seen my corresponding thread:



@tjkohli Your efforts are appreciated, but when I finally saw the photo of a huge mic resting on an open-facing headphone pad, I was concerned, especially when you are trying to measure differences in bass transmission, the acoustic production of such heavily depending on seal. Anyways, you would see from my video and the corresponding thread posts that my own method of acoustic measurement on my own head and ears despite its limitations yielded minimal differences even up to 96 kHz (my MOTU M2 and FiiO K9 Pro ESS could handle such). Now, the Meze cables tested with the Meze Elite seemed the most likely to have exhibited a minor difference in the upper midrange, still only on the order of 0.4 dB, though I had ought to have taken more trials, and yes, they were of different lengths, this mainly manifesting in a bit of a volume difference. I also compared Meze's cheaper silver-plated copper cable with a Lavricables Grand which is about as silver as it gets, and there weren't even notable differences in the ultrasonic range.

@VNandor You might also be curious of my latest results with this method.