[bigshot]

Just so you know where you went South on this...

I am convinced that neither cable is defective. Over several decades, I have taken a keen interest in this field and tested numerous headphones and IEMs across the low, medium, and high-end spectrum*. Remarkably, both cables exhibit high-quality sound.

Another consideration is whether she (consciously or unconsciously) possesses insights that enable her to respond accurately every time.

Both of these things can't be true. Either one is wrong, or the other one is. You were doing fine up until this point. But you brushed aside the three other options... that one of the cables was not performing to spec because of an impedance mismatch; that your test was seriously flawed and your daughter was operating sighted; or that you just made the whole thing up. The first possibility was extremely unlikely, the second doesn't sound like something a six year old could pull off, so that left me with option 3.

You have to remember two things about the internet:

1) There are all kinds of people on the internet, and role-playing and self-validating prevarication are extremely common. When you post under an anonymous screen name, there's no reputation to vouch for your honesty. Right and wrong and truths and lies will be judged by your words alone. You may be lying, I may be lying. It's up to the reader to sort it all out. I will state what I think is happening, whether it's polite or not, because I am trying to be honest. You can convince me otherwise through facts, not demands for politeness. Respect is earned.

2) The internet never forgets. You can get a post deleted, but it won't change anything. My advice is to try and err on the side of honesty and not be tempted to try to fudge things to make a point. It's better to be proven wrong and learn something than it is to win an argument based on a lie.

* I am being polite and I'm not asking you to outline the procedures you used when testing the numerous headphones you say you've tested across the low, medium and high end spectrum. I think I know the answer wouldn't satisfy me.

 

[BS5711]

Nobody called you a liar, a few, myself included, indicated entirely accurately that one possibility was that the original post was a fabrication to mess with the science guys.

That is one of only a few realistic possibilities so it is entirely fair and indeed perfectly scientific to point that out, you are in the “Sound Science” forum after all.

To omit stating an obvious possibility in favour of your feelings would be very much in line with the way the modern world seems to be going but it would not be very scientific.

 

[Dragonmilenario]

Nobody called you a liar…

Bigshot and others have called me that, come on, directly and bluntly.

I had no idea how cultish the forum could get. I thought it was a safe place to share experiences about sound and headphones, without all this PS3 vs Xbox 360 era level crap or worse.

Back to the topic of the thread, there is one thing I keep coming back to: my daughter’s response always came at a specific second of that clip (being open headphones, and even though the volume was low, I could hear it). At that point, she respond with the word old (silver) or new (copper) cable. It was always the same second, when the voice and the drums took on more presence.

For these reasons and others, I believe she was not cheating, at least not consciously.

 

[BS5711]

Bigshot and others have called me that, come on, directly and bluntly.

I said:

"Something else was going on with the 'test' described here, my guess is the post was fictitious and designed to get the science crowd to argue or the six year old in question could see some part of the cable and fibbed to dad."


Bigshot said:

"I'm guessing it's made up. The average six year old is probably more honest and truthful than the average audiophool."

and

"I think this is a game. It’s a game of poke those guys in sound science with a stick by pretending to have done a test."


If you think that is the same as calling you a "LIAR" directly and bluntly then you have a very different version of blunt than I do.


You posted a 'test' that flies in the face of scientific fact and it is perfectly fair to say that one of the possibilities is that the test didn't even happen, this is the internet after all, how do we know to trust you, you could be a 14 year old kid sitting at home messing with people for all we know ..... please don't come back and criticise that comment also.

At the end of the day you will believe whatever you want to believe, Head Fi is full of people that state all sorts of things as fact that have no basis in science at all, quite the opposite, so feel free to believe whatever makes you happy but don't expect others to believe you outright because you said it is so.

 

[blaked]

For whatever it's worth, Dragonmilenario, I never got the impression you were posting in bad faith. I wouldn't have bothered posting anything myself in this thread if I had because I just don't have the patience. I tend to lurk in Sound Science and not much anywhere else on Head-Fi, but I don't post much for just that reason: no patience for trolls. What I have noticed, and I'm sure the regulars here can tell you better than I, is that trolls are commonplace in Sound Science. It's an all-too-regular occurrence that people who have bought fully into audiophile marketing decide they need to come into Sound Science and stir things up, often for no obvious reason than to be antagonistic. Some even get banned and create new user accounts to do it again. Things get unpleasant very quickly. I think it may be that what you've experienced is an overdeveloped self-defense mechanism kicking in. It's unpleasant, but it's sort of understandable based on the history of this sub-forum, which is treated sort of like the proverbial red-headed stepchild of this site.

As to your game with your daughter, I would refer back to my earlier post. Single-blind testing, as you've done, is problematic because there's literally no way to be sure the tester isn't cueing the test subject, even if only inadvertently. See the link I posted previously about the Clever Hans effect, which details how the discoverer of the phenomenon couldn't even keep himself from doing it.

 

[bigshot]

I had no idea how cultish the forum could get.

That's the kind of comment all the trolls that come in here to poke us with a stick make. The next comment they make is that we aren't scientific enough.

This is a science forum. There is no scientific reason to believe that two properly manufactured and designed cables will sound different. Therefore, either one of the cables is defective, your testing procedures are sloppy enough to get a false result, or someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. Those are the options here. You can like them or not, but those are the facts. If you don't believe it, don't keep doing the same false test over and over... do a null test and find out for sure. You've "tested multiple headphones and IEMs of a range of price points" right? You probably know how to do a simple null test.

There's no point getting huffy. I'm not insulting you personally. Righteous indignation is a waste of all of our time. This is the internet. I have no idea who you are or how honest your claims are. All I can say is that the results of your test are wrong and offer suggestions on why that might be. If you're sincere, you need to up your game and figure out where your error is. The ball's in your court.

 

[Dragonmilenario]

Ok, as far as I can see several prophets have come here before me with similar assertions in different aspects and that is why there has been some aggressiveness in the comments. Let's leave that behind, it's a forum, we are adults and sometimes things are said that may upset.

It is my first contribution (I think) in this subforum and first I apologize because I did not imagine that it was taken so seriously. I would never post a test-game like this in the Scientific American magazine forum, to give an example (no idea if there is such a forum, LOL), I thought this subforum was like the rest of Head-Fi, with personal opinions and assessments and not proven facts.

I accept (from several posts ago in fact) that I may have made several mistakes that allowed my daughter to choose the wire so acuratly.

Until this thread I had little idea that there were such opposite sides of the audiophile coin, I thought there were users who noticed more or less difference in these things and who placed more or less importance on cables.

For me for example, a Fiio K7 sounds the same (in quality) as a high end Vioelectric... I notice the difference between tubes and transistors, but between different transistors DAC's I find it very difficult. If the source is clean and powerful, there may be a slight change in profile, but nothing "better or worse".

With cables I thought similar but lighter audible, being silver and copper different materials. I myself think I hear a very very small difference, but maybe it's suggestion.

So, read my post more as an ignorant father proud of his daughter who thought her young ears could hear that profile change more than as a false prophet of the cables.

That said... why did my daughter always respond at the same point in the song, when the voice and drums became more present? Any clues?

And looking ahead to Christmas, when I do this fun experiment again with her grandfather, I welcome recommendations to make it as thorough as possible, though remember she's a little girl and it has to be fun. I don't want to be left guessing.

 

[bigshot]

Voices and drums would make absolutely no difference.

A null test would be more definitive.

 

[Hiker816]

This is a science subforum. There is no scientific reason of which we are currently aware to believe that two properly manufactured and designed cables will sound different. Therefore, either one of the cables is defective, your testing procedures are sloppy enough to get a false result, or someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes, or your test results are in fact accurate for reasons we have not yet uncovered. Those are the options I can think of here. You can like them or not, but those are the facts explanations of which I am currently aware.

I'm not sure your original comment is wholly accurate. I gave a shot at revising it above. A scientific explanation is not a fact. It's a hypothesized explanation, which is always subject to revision to reflect new information. I think we would all be better served if that distinction were more acknowledged.

Also, regardless of our position, there's no reason we can't be nice about it. Most of the other subforums don't have this level of hostility.

 

[The Jester]

Hypothesis is by definition a “what if” question … after exhaustively researching, testing and dismissing or confirming it becomes theory, which in the scientific world is accepted as fact, but not in the usual context of fact as being irrefutable “set in stone” forever, just an accepted fact until new proven information or discoveries need it to be changed.

 

[bigshot]

I'm not sure your original comment is wholly accurate. I gave a shot at revising it above. A scientific explanation is not a fact. It's a hypothesized explanation, which is always subject to revision to reflect new information. I think we would all be better served if that distinction were more acknowledged.

There's over a century of scientific testing to back up what I said. And scores of technological advancements, from telegraph to telephone to moon rockets depend on it being true. Feel free to make semantic noodles to what I said, but that doesn't change the fact that the things being claimed here are flat out wrong.

As for politeness, fine. When the discussion in this forum isn't swamped by outright dumb arguments over things that are self evidently not true, I'll be happy to be more polite. There are MUCH better things to discuss than this. Normally, when someone is proved wrong, they learn from their mistake and move on. They don't ignore the things pointed out to them and continue to restate their incorrect statement over and over. That is trolling.

 

[Hiker816]

Hypothesis is by definition a “what if” question … after exhaustively researching, testing and dismissing or confirming it becomes theory, which in the scientific world is accepted as fact, but not in the usual context of fact as being irrefutable “set in stone” forever, just an accepted fact until new proven information or discoveries need it to be changed.

I'm not sure that's accurate. A hypothesis is a possible explanation of a given phenomenon, which is a scientific hypothesis if it can be tested by observations and/or experiments--i.e., it is falsifiable. That hypothesis can become a scientific theory if it is a coherent explanation for a large number of facts and observations--so you're right, after researching and testing. The theory can be more or less supportable and accepted depending on the extent of that testing. At no point does the theory become a fact, however. A scientific fact is an objective and verifiable observation. It is not the explanation for that observation, however. Rather, the theory is.

@bigshot , fair enough. But I don't think anyone on this thread has been "proved wrong." Nor does proving someone wrong seem like a particularly laudable goal. Seeking the best explanation certainly is, though. That's why you won't see me criticizing ideas presented here to further experiment to try to determine if the OP's daughter did truly discern a difference, and if so, why.

 

[bigshot]

I think discussing semantics isn't a useful application of my time. I'll stick to the point thankyouverymuch... There is no way anyone with human ears could tell the difference between two properly manufactured and designed headphone cables. In case you weren't paying attention, I already provided three explanations of why he might have come up with those incorrect results. I refer you back to that. If you have spare time to do tests of things that are already accepted and have been for over a century, have at it. But as the owner of a $200+ headphone cable, you probably should have done that test before you bought the Zynsonix Ballista.

Now that we've gotten the "you're not scientific enough" out of the way, I'm going to proclaim the shark jumped on this thread.

 

[Hiker816]

There is no way anyone with human ears could tell the difference between two properly manufactured and designed headphone cables.

. . .

But as the owner of a $200+ headphone cable, you probably should have done that test before you bought the Zynsonix Ballista.

You're assuming you know all there is to know about all human ears and all properly manufactured and designed headphone cables. If that's true, good for you. I'm envious. I prefer to remain more humble about the extent of my knowledge. That is actually why I own some of the cables I do. I wanted to see for myself if they made a difference for me. Jury's still out; may sell some. (SQ is also not the only rational reason to purchase a particular cable or other component, though. Reliability and, for lack of a better term, risk-avoidance also matter, at least to me. For example, I trust Zynsonix to take care when constructing a cable or switchbox, and to provide good support if I ever need it later. It can sometimes feel like rolling the dice with some other brands).

At any rate, you seem to have great ideas about further testing the OP could perform. Why not ask where he or she is located and offer to help set those tests up if not too far?

 

[bigshot]

Human hearing has been studied for even longer than wires! There are studies that establish the JDD (just detectable difference) of various parameters of sound. The difference between two properly designed and manufactured cables is more than an order of magnitude below the threshold of audibility.

Ignorance isn’t the same as humility. Just because you have no clue about this stuff and go by subjective feelings, it doesn’t mean that science hasn’t studied and quantified these things. You should listen more and argue less. Other people might know about things you don’t and you can learn from them if you don’t argue with them about things you don’t know. That’s my friendly advice.

If he wants help, he can ask for it. We’ve helped people in the past. I don’t think he wants help.

A null test is drop dead simple. Anyone with a computer to capture audio and a 2 mono to one stereo mini plug can do that. Amazon Basics will work fine for that.