[Ruben123]

Woof!
It now goes around that the Sony HiFi memory card does really cause better audio quality because the Sony zx2 dap has horrible interference with memory cards. While I do know different cards ask different power from a device, I find it very hard to believe that there is any increase in sound....

 

[RRod]

 
… people who believe that if it's them talking, then opinion is fact. who will get highly offended when you ask for some evidence of their exotic claims. …

 
Seems lately that it's them believing that belief is science, and so any of us who claim that science doesn't support their beliefs are simply charlatans.

 

[Ruben123]

I get how they think though. We all think the earth is flat. Imagine a scientist came up and said that the earth is round instead because...
For us, a flat earth makes more sense and reflects what we see. The earth doesn't curve, what is that bs.
Go away scientist. Ban him. Lynch him, kill him quickly.
*changing cables won't make a difference sir* *QUICKLY BAN HIM WITH THAT BS*

 

[RRod]

I get how they think though. We all think the earth is flat. Imagine a scientist came up and said that the earth is round instead because...
For us, a flat earth makes more sense and reflects what we see. The earth doesn't curve, what is that bs.
Go away scientist. Ban him. Lynch him, kill him quickly.
*changing cables won't make a difference sir* *QUICKLY BAN HIM WITH THAT BS*

 
 
Actually it's more like lots of scientists have already decided the earth is round and have written tons of books on the subject, but they just can't get the word out to people who live where printing presses are considered the devil's work

 

[sonitus mirus]

Just trust your level, it's perfectly flat.  

 

[upstateguy]

 

I get how they think though. We all think the earth is flat. Imagine a scientist came up and said that the earth is round instead because...
For us, a flat earth makes more sense and reflects what we see. The earth doesn't curve, what is that bs.
Go away scientist. Ban him. Lynch him, kill him quickly.
*changing cables won't make a difference sir* *QUICKLY BAN HIM WITH THAT BS*

 
 
Actually it's more like lots of scientists have already decided the earth is round and have written tons of books on the subject, but they just can't get the word out to people who live where printing presses are considered the devil's work

 Have you guys seen how many flat earth videos are on YouTube?

 

[Dillan]

 Have you guys seen how many flat earth videos are on YouTube?

Those same dudes are the ones who flocked to the lessloss black body back in the day. http://www.lessloss.com/blackbody-p-200.html

 

[krismusic]

Those same dudes are the ones who flocked to the lessloss black body back in the day. http://www.lessloss.com/blackbody-p-200.html

You couldn't make it up! Oh. Wait a minute. They did!

 

[castleofargh]

the all cable thing(but it's the same with highres, DACs, and so many subjects), I feel like some of us objectiwhatevers are as much at fault as the placebophiles. it's very easy in practice to get 2 cables on some low impedance multi BA IEMs and get a very audible signature change. many people who owned a lot of IEMs and tried cables can relate to that. so when we come with our "cables don't make a difference". we're the ones who are wrong and those guys have no choice but to agree with the other side of the argument, and will often feel bullied and antagonized for having said they heard a difference.
we talk as if people would care about specs before buying gears. they massively don't. most guys care about "is this better?" and they will plug 2 "it's night&day better" devices from some BS review into each other. and that's it. 
so we should have never taken that "no difference" angle to argue about cables. maybe we were led to that by some annoying straw man argument? maybe by some newly awaken objectivist with to much zeal and not enough understanding? maybe someone just got bored to say the same thing for the billionth time? IDK, all 3 seem very likely to me, and it sure pisses me off when I read a BS post about adding warmth with a little gold in the cable, or increasing soundstage with silver. but cables can sound different when you don't have clue what you're doing and you randomly plug stuff into other stuff looking for "synergy". when talking to the majority of audiophiles, we're dealing with that kind of reasoning. so of course they have experiences that go beyond what nominal usage would do.
 
our basic way of thinking and our assumptions are different. for the majority of us here, we wouldn't get a 120ohm amp to use with low impedance IEMs. we wouldn't be interested in some strange DAC with fancy philosophy and higher than usual distortions. we wouldn't buy a silver cryo cable at 1000$. so we tend to think about what will happen within more standard conditions, when many people don't even know they're doing something wrong in pairing, settings, or buying something a fortune when it's a poor technological choice with real consequences.
 
I don't have any magic answer on how to communicate with someone who uses exotic gears for irrational reasons, but we're usually the better informed guys in here on how stuff work. so it's up to us to try and push the information through others in a way that doesn't turn them into blinded haters. and it's kind of our fault when we fail to do it.
 
 
of course a forum that discourages talking about placebo and blind test in casual conversations is really not helping people become more rational about their gears...

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Please, this is the Objectivists Board Room where we discuss what we can do to make these forums better, not the "Saloon" where we get drunk on tales of ...(whatever) in public. This kind of talk in public is doing you guys' reputation no good...

 

[reginalb]

  the all cable thing(but it's the same with highres, DACs, and so many subjects), I feel like some of us objectiwhatevers are as much at fault as the placebophiles. it's very easy in practice to get 2 cables on some low impedance multi BA IEMs and get a very audible signature change....

 
I assume this would be related to the low input impedance and the amount of current that different materials allow? The only test I know of is the famous coat hanger speaker wire test, but again, a loudspeaker is not a balanced armature driver.
 
I've actually never found bass rolloff from my super low impedance UM Merlins, and I've always assumed the impedance at lower frequencies is higher (after all, the lows are handled by a dynamic driver, instead of the balanced armatures for the mids and highs). 

 

[jcx]

a problem for iem recable is the mechanics - the weight, low stiffness, smooth finish can be hard to duplicate with hobby wire, insulation, methods
 
 
a amp could have a tunable negative resistance to just cancel cable R - but then it hits the rails or even oscillates when unloaded
 
 
another option for the obsessed would be Kelvin sensing out to the driver, and use much finer wire
 
again requires custom electronics - I have professionally closed feedback loops over 50 feet of twisted pair - but only at Industrial sensor speeds of few kHz
 
 
how about comparing the cable R/XO Z  (fractional?, maybe 1?) dB bumps to abx thresholds 1st, and then maybe just applying EQ?
 
 
but yeah there are over enthusiastic "debunkers" who don't allow for the real edge cases, proper calculations

 

[castleofargh]

 

  the all cable thing(but it's the same with highres, DACs, and so many subjects), I feel like some of us objectiwhatevers are as much at fault as the placebophiles. it's very easy in practice to get 2 cables on some low impedance multi BA IEMs and get a very audible signature change....

 
I assume this would be related to the low input impedance and the amount of current that different materials allow? The only test I know of is the famous coat hanger speaker wire test, but again, a loudspeaker is not a balanced armature driver.
 
I've actually never found bass rolloff from my super low impedance UM Merlins, and I've always assumed the impedance at lower frequencies is higher (after all, the lows are handled by a dynamic driver, instead of the balanced armatures for the mids and highs). 

yup impedance mostly with IEMs I guess. the coat hanger IMO is a pretty good cable. but not very practical as IEM cable ^_^.
we assume that cables will all have like 0.1ohm impedance, because there is no logical reason for them not to. but that's exactly where we fail. some manufacturers will stop at nothing to market a difference as being audio superiority and pray they will get away with it.
there are also a few rare cases where the manufacturer went with some added resistance on purpose to tune the response of the IEM(like the ER4 for the obvious known stuff, but other IEMs were like that and not always made very public. so going for a custom cable without the added resistors would change the sound. those stuff are a one in 1000 thing, but one unexplained difference is all it takes for the audio world to believe in something weird.
 
I've played around with a F111 once, I very much like those, but just bending the cable was changing my impedance measurement in a way I have never seen before

. but it was going as low as 7ohm, how many DAPs will have troubles with such a low impedance? it's very possible that adding 2 or 3 ohm to the cable would let the amp section "breath" a little better on the current side of things. it's hard to guess the actual impact when we're playing so close to the limits of the gears.
I love the SE846, but I don't buy it because I'm scared of how low its impedance goes at some point. I'm confident that you can create a lot of cable legends by using those IEMs and weirdly specced cables.
I will never forget the 1+2. anybody who tried those with a few cables has probably revised his opinion on cables changing the sound. I never got to know what was strange on those, if the original cable was strange, or if it's only a very wild and going very low impedance response? IDK. but it was easy to go from nice sound to meh signature. so drawing weird conclusions would be simple.  just like people start calling a DAP warm or cold because of how the impedance changed the sound of the IEM they tried it with. the warm DAP will in fact be cold with another IEM that has it's impedance curve going the other way. it's false conclusions made out of ignorance, but the correlation was seen for real(sometimes^_^).
with that we have the sources with caps at the output that end up becoming a high pass filter with very low impedance IEMs and will roll off the subs. "this daps has rolled off subs" will say the review. but I use it with a 50ohm headphone and the subs are just fine, so someone is wrong, yet both did experience what they mention.  they may very well have a real experience, and only the conclusion they come up with is total BS.
 
 
I don't think it's that easy to pin one cause to explain all the weird claims about cables, but there certainly are plenty of real life situations using improper gears and cables that could lead to making weird conclusions from misunderstood correlations. obviously one should know better than to make a rule out of a one time thing, but it's not like audiophiles are educated about the value of repeatability.

 

[U-3C]

yup impedance mostly with IEMs I guess. the coat hanger IMO is a pretty good cable. but not very practical as IEM cable ^_^.
we assume that cables will all have like 0.1ohm impedance, because there is no logical reason for them not to. but that's exactly where we fail. some manufacturers will stop at nothing to market a difference as being audio superiority and pray they will get away with it.
there are also a few rare cases where the manufacturer went with some added resistance on purpose to tune the response of the IEM(like the ER4 for the obvious known stuff, but other IEMs were like that and not always made very public. so going for a custom cable without the added resistors would change the sound. those stuff are a one in 1000 thing, but one unexplained difference is all it takes for the audio world to believe in something weird.

I've played around with a F111 once, I very much like those, but just bending the cable was changing my impedance measurement in a way I have never seen before . but it was going as low as 7ohm, how many DAPs will have troubles with such a low impedance? it's very possible that adding 2 or 3 ohm to the cable would let the amp section "breath" a little better on the current side of things. it's hard to guess the actual impact when we're playing so close to the limits of the gears.
I love the SE846, but I don't buy it because I'm scared of how low its impedance goes at some point. I'm confident that you can create a lot of cable legends by using those IEMs and weirdly specced cables.
I will never forget the 1+2. anybody who tried those with a few cables has probably revised his opinion on cables changing the sound. I never got to know what was strange on those, if the original cable was strange, or if it's only a very wild and going very low impedance response? IDK. but it was easy to go from nice sound to meh signature. so drawing weird conclusions would be simple.  just like people start calling a DAP warm or cold because of how the impedance changed the sound of the IEM they tried it with. the warm DAP will in fact be cold with another IEM that has it's impedance curve going the other way. it's false conclusions made out of ignorance, but the correlation was seen for real(sometimes^_^).
with that we have the sources with caps at the output that end up becoming a high pass filter with very low impedance IEMs and will roll off the subs. "this daps has rolled off subs" will say the review. but I use it with a 50ohm headphone and the subs are just fine, so someone is wrong, yet both did experience what they mention.  they may very well have a real experience, and only the conclusion they come up with is total BS.


I don't think it's that easy to pin one cause to explain all the weird claims about cables, but there certainly are plenty of real life situations using improper gears and cables that could lead to making weird conclusions from misunderstood correlations. obviously one should know better than to make a rule out of a one time thing, but it's not like audiophiles are educated about the value of repeatability.

Welp, I'm just reading this thread and am learning a lot. Perhaps it's about time I delete all my previous posts on every single site I have ever visited and switch to a new account name to hide my shameful ignorance from the world. 0_0

 

[Dillan]

Welp, I'm just reading this thread and am learning a lot. Perhaps it's about time I delete all my previous posts on every single site I have ever visited and switch to a new account name to hide my shameful ignorance from the world. 0_0

Probably