[alfie]

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Originally Posted by amartignano Trusting in science doesn't mean to reject there is other parameters ecept the ones already known. Believing to derive superiority of sound equipment from restricted physical knowledge of the electrical parameter and their consequences on sound is pure geniality. And, by the way, I'm a physicist.

That was a joke as reply to your previous one.

If there is something more, which is simply obvious as in any other scientific field, people must prove it in some accepted way. Nobody can just say there are more parameters, offering scientific argumentations that don't pass any revision or just naming some sort of faith.

Please, also consider that science is always and will be always manipulated by marketing, which is the other real parameter here. In this peculiar case the manipulation is very gross, in my very very humble opionion.

 

[Kees]

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Originally Posted by Leporello One's belief in God may be a fact (i.e. it is true that one believes in God). But it is not a proof that God actually exists. Following your philosophy - if I understand it correctly - it seems that any firmly held belief actually must be true. I guess there are still some who firmly believe that earth is flat. OTOH - there are those who deny this. Both believers are sincere and honest. The uneasy conclusion is that two mutually contradictory statements are true at the at the same time. A and !A. Regards, L.

The difference is in the fact that some statement can be proven and some cannot. A personal experience (= perception of some audible difference) is one of those things that we will never be able to prove.

If a lot of people experience the same thing, then they can come to the understanding that there is something outside themselves. Provable or at least very likely true. (the earth is round, not flat). And in this case it is also nessecary that everybody involved has the ability to perceive the fenomenon.

But this does not work in the situation that the fenomenon can only be perceived by one person. Or by very few.
You can make people believe the earth is round by showing them in a lot of different ways. Most may understand, some may just believe you speak the truth (and it is no big concern of theirs either, so they won't bother to try to contradict you). Some just won't see and will never be convinced. But everybody, basically, has the ability to perceive the evidence of the earth being round.

On the other had: it is impossible to prove to someone that something can be heard if that person is unable to hear it. That person would be totally dependent on the opinion of others who (say they) can. And since this person is not likely to benefit from this, he or she will not be inclined to just believe it.

And this construction of making things likely does not work the other way around (as stated very well by edstrelow). If a lot of people do not perceive something it does not mean it is not there.

 

[rodbac]

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Trusting in science doesn't mean to reject there is other parameters ecept the ones already known.

It does if there is nothing unexplained. In that case, you're just rejecting the explanations already present despite their strength.

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If a lot of people do not perceive something it does not mean it is not there.

Of course- which is why those perceiving something have to prove that their perception is based on what they say it is. Otherwise, if it fits all known parameters, there is no reason to assume anything else.

Edstrelow's post that you all keep referring to stated nothing that isn't acknowledged 3 milliseconds into every conversation on this matter- that the negative can't be proven. Everyone knows this already.

That's stated awkwardly, but I think it's clear.

 

[barkas]

Subjective human perception is always hard to quantify. But I'm not sure if it has to be about perception.

How about using 2 different cables, one carrying an inverted signal, link them together and look if there's anything left, or something using a 2 channel oscilloscope, I don't know. If there's no difference then, then there is no difference (except if the human ear can hear better than we can analyze the signal, which I doubt).

If it has to be about perception, I'm not sure how deep we are into aural perception. In visual perception there are quite some things you can measure (more or less). However if it's about perception, there will always remain doubt due to the subjectiveness of it all.

@kees: I do believe cat5 cable is not a good medium for audio signals: the copper core is too small, you'd have to use all 8 of them for 1 channel methinks.

 

[Amplitude]

It may be true that different cables and cables after burn-in don't actually send information differently. This dosn't mean they wont sound better to some people. This may not be what you are saying, Rodbac, but it is what the article is saying: "The lie is that high-priced speakercables and interconnects sound better than the standard, run-of-the-mill (say,Radio Shack) ones." In my opinion it dosn't matter what the cable is actually doing if it sounds like an improvement and brings pleasure to the user, which is the true use of cables in this context (listening for fun). To a deaf person, a fancy piece of string may be the optimal headphone cable

.

 

[rodbac]

Quote:

However if it's about perception, there will always remain doubt due to the subjectiveness of it all.

Not if you eliminate the other explanations by showing that you can tell which cable is which under controlled conditions (which probably means some kind of DBT).

 

[rodbac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amplitude It may be true that different cables and cables after burn-in don't actually send information differently. This dosn't mean they wont sound better to some people. This may not be what you are saying, Rodbac, but it is what the article is saying: "The lie is that high-priced speakercables and interconnects sound better than the standard, run-of-the-mill (say,Radio Shack) ones." In my opinion it dosn't matter what the cable is actually doing if it sounds like an improvement and brings pleasure to the user, which is the true use of cables in this context (listening for fun).

Considering that's what critics maintain is going on, if that's what someone wants to retreat to, they'll get no argument from anybody, I don't think.

 

[Filburt]

I'm not going to argue that placebotic effects are distinguishable from 'real' effects and things of that sort. Phenomenologically speaking, they're the same. Scientifically speaking, they aren't the same, as science deals in third person ontology whereas your phenomenology is first person. The word 'placebo' exists precisely because there is an attempt made to distinguish it from some other sort of phenomenon. The issue here isn't about whether it subjectively 'sounds' different to you...I doubt many are going to argue that it doesn't sound different to you. The issue is that assertions made about cables are done so in a sort of language that suggests something _beyond_ placebotic effects, and that's what is being addressed by this article and rodbac. If I say something like "well this Cardas cable gives me much better placebotic effects than this Zu cable", many advocates of cables are probably going to think I'm understating the 'real' effects of cables. If people seriously thought the effects reduced down to individuated placebotic effects, there would be little point in suggesting any cable to someone to produce a particular change in sound or remedy a certain problem as there would be no basis for thinking it were up to the task. So the issue at hand extends beyond simply your personal subjective experience with the cable as the language describing cables is being couched in terms that connote more than simply placebotic effects.

Secondly, it is true that lack of evidence or observation does not entail lack of existence. However, reasonable suspicion of encounter probably does. That is, for example, unicorns may in some manner exist but no one has seen one, which given other parameters such as shared physiology, environment, and daily activities, it may be thought that I can reasonably suspect I won't see one either. The usefulness of ABX versus other things such as a spectrum analyser is that it doesn't have to ignore or reduce your subjectivity to generate data. It's based solely on the phenomenal character of your subjective experience and your ability to distinguish between the cables et al. solely within that domain. Still, user fatigue and attempts at guessing can corrupt the data, but it's probably the most reliable method we have available, and the data it produces at least in my experience as been pretty useful. What ABX will give you is probably reason to suspect that the differences you hear reduce to placebo. If you're comfortable with that, so be it, but that's something categorically different from the sorts of assertions made about cables in general, and retreating to a placebo defense is to retreat away from the sort of language that typifies discussion of cable sonic properties.

 

[Trogdor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rodbac I can handle the fire, Trog. Thanks, though.

The issue is why jump in to it to begin with...see below...

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There is nothing "hard to define" about an actual audible difference in the signal. To insist otherwise is merely trying to muddy the waters.

Your missing the point entirely: The issue is exactly its EXTREMELY HARD TO DEFINE once your out of the quantative game and into the qualitative one. Testing different cables is testing people's perception of the audio signal (for better or worse). How do you know what you perceive to be different is placebo and vice-a-versa? Also, is that test enough to exceed probability in the case of a "known" scenario, i.e. if I introducing noise in the signal which does measure quantitatively, can your test clearly identify the perceived change by the tester? I'm repeating what edstrelow stated but applying it somewhat to the topic at hand.

 

[rodbac]

Quote:

Testing different cables is testing people's perception of the audio signal (for better or worse). How do you know what you perceive to be different is placebo and vice-a-versa? Also, is that test enough to exceed probability in the case of a "known" scenario, i.e. if I introducing noise in the signal which does measure quantitatively, can your test clearly identify the perceived change by the tester? I'm repeating what edstrelow stated but applying it somewhat to the topic at hand.

I must not be stating this very clearly, although I didn't think I would have been the first to clarify this.

We're not trying to measure anyone's perception- nobody cares what you're perceiving. We only care whether you can tell the difference between one cable and another, which will be dead simple to do if the differences are indeed what is claimed.

The debate is this: critics say you're experiencing the placebo effect, "believers" (for lack of a better term- I don't mean it derogatorily) say it's not placebo but rather "real" audible changes.

So to resolve the debate, we need to perform a listening test that eliminates placebo (which DBT would do).

If the "believer" still hears those dramatic changes (can differentiate between cables), we can reasonably rule out placebo and assume the "believer" is hearing real differences.

If, on the other hand, the "believer" can't differentiate, it's reasonable to assume the current explanations hold (that he's merely hearing placebo, which is extremely common).

 

[sejarzo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by elrod-tom .....Same goes for the dynamic range of a recording. By this I mean the range in db over which one has variability. Listen to a CD of (for example) Beethoven's Pastorale...there is not nearly the transition from quiet passages to full orchestral passages that one finds even on a vinyl album (if one doesn't mind the occasional interfering pop).

Interesting comment, but I've never, ever once felt that CD's had less dynamic range than LP's. In fact, that's why I think CD's are superior, especially in the classical genre, where there is true dynamic range in the live performance. Bad engineering in either format ruins that.

I simply got tired of getting bad pressings from DG and Phillips, not to mention the horrid domestic crap put out by Columbia, RCA et al to the point that I gave up listening to classical on LP for years. Noise during quiet passages was just too distracting.

There's just no way that I'd ever re-invest in vinyl at this point.

 

[Kees]

Quote:

Originally Posted by barkas Subjective human perception is always hard to quantify. But I'm not sure if it has to be about perception. How about using 2 different cables, one carrying an inverted signal, link them together and look if there's anything left, or something using a 2 channel oscilloscope, I don't know. If there's no difference then, then there is no difference (except if the human ear can hear better than we can analyze the signal, which I doubt). If it has to be about perception, I'm not sure how deep we are into aural perception. In visual perception there are quite some things you can measure (more or less). However if it's about perception, there will always remain doubt due to the subjectiveness of it all. @kees: I do believe cat5 cable is not a good medium for audio signals: the copper core is too small, you'd have to use all 8 of them for 1 channel methinks.

I think the human ear is capable of much more than we measure. The trouble is that the human brain does all sorts of unexplainable (or better: as yet unexplained) tricks to the signal, that make it impossible to measure the actual perception accurately. (The signals actually being transmitted in the nerves have NO obvious (1 on 1)relation to the signal measured in the eardrum, still the brain manages to reconstruct a recognizable experience: the perceived sound. A lot of what we "hear" in our brain apears to be a reconstruction induced by the signal rather than actual "sound facts".)

For my speaker cable I actually use 2x24 strands per channel (= six cable lengths per speaker), twisted and braided (I remove the outer, grey, insulation first, twist three pairs of cable length into three lengths and then braid the resulting three lengths) At the end I separate the + and - of each channel by splitting the ends up in white and coloured.
Warning: wear gloves if you try this.....

 

[Samgotit]

Just offering these as some light reading. I'm not pointing at them as proof of anything. Please... no private message death threats. They could be of some interest to someone interested in power cords:


http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...s-12-2004.html

http://www.hifiwigwam.com/forum1/1614.html


Power cords don't do crap.

 

[Kees]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rodbac I must not be stating this very clearly, although I didn't think I would have been the first to clarify this. We're not trying to measure anyone's perception- nobody cares what you're perceiving. We only care whether you can tell the difference between one cable and another, which will be dead simple to do if the differences are indeed what is claimed. The debate is this: critics say you're experiencing the placebo effect, "believers" (for lack of a better term- I don't mean it derogatorily) say it's not placebo but rather "real" audible changes. So to resolve the debate, we need to perform a listening test that eliminates placebo (which DBT would do). If the "believer" still hears those dramatic changes (can differentiate between cables), we can reasonably rule out placebo and assume the "believer" is hearing real differences. If, on the other hand, the "believer" can't differentiate, it's reasonable to assume the current explanations hold (that he's merely hearing placebo, which is extremely common).

Doing this test you would indeed rule out the placebo effect in the assumptions specific people are making regarding specific audible effects.

If the person is actually able to indicate the difference correctly in this test, it is safe to state there probably IS a difference.

If the person is NOT able to indicate the difference correctly on the other hand, you canNOT conclude there is NO difference.

This can be very useful:

If the test results are positive you can in this way prove there is a difference.
If the test results are positive you can prove a specific person can actually perceive a specific difference.
If the test results are negative you have proved NOTHING. The difference may still be there, you just didn't prove it.....

The point being: you can sometimes prove an audible difference to be there, but you can never prove it is not there.

And that is where SOME people go wrong. If Snake Oil states that an audible difference is present in his product, nobody will be able to prove it is not....
If his "proof" is not accepted, that is just that: no conclusion possible. The difference may still be there, but nothing is proven....It does not make him a liar. It is possible for events to be true without being proven. Gravity was a dead fact also before Newton.

Some very WRONG people make use of this being so. I am in no way trying to talk this right (because it isn't), but there is just NOTHING science or scientific methods can do about that.....

 

[rodbac]

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It is possible for events to be true without being proven.

If everything observed fits into a well-established paradigm, which these reports do, there is no reason to advance some alternate explanation, ESPECIALLY when that alternate explanation breaks down so quickly.

If you don't think you're hearing placebo, and that 20KHz signal is actually being altered over one adequately sized piece of copper versus another, then show everyone a scenario where placebo doesn't work and you've got an unexplained phenomenon for which your "we don't know everything about this"-scenario would apply.

While a reasonable scientist would be the first to insist that science never knows everything, there ARE some things it knows very well, and the behavior of an electrical signal is one of them.