I really appreciated your post but I do believe this part to be incorrect. Just my opinion but I don’t think that is what this thread is about. Blind tests are great and I think anyone else here would agree but it’s not always the easiest to achieve. It’s a hobby with many different lives from all over the world. Not everything is so black and white.
I appreciate your comment, and I hope to be incorrect (leaving it simply this way, not getting into my previous experience). I'll put more later in this comment on how I experienced that cables can matter a lot - the question is only where and how to draw the line in, absolitely, our very colourful and soundful world.
I, for one, would love to see a blind test. Why don’t you set one up and share the methodology + results with us?
Very briefly (if more interest from others, I can possibly expand or just move to personal communication): the key idea is to exclude any visual and tactile interference and recognition. A second independent person is needed for random selection. In my case of testing cables of similar thickness, mounting them from behind by another person was sufficient. Some sheathing, e.g. foam/isolation tubes may be needed to fully exclude tactile recognition.
In my tests, I could not recognize the cables beyond the ones with significantly higher resistance.
On some days when I was cable rolling between a bunch of same major component (copper, silver) 8 wires chifi or from EA or what not, I really do have a hard time hearing the difference, I mean I even hear songs differently when I initially wake up compared to during the day, or about to sleep, on some days some iems become harsher and on some other days bass becomes heavier, some days cable rolling is super fun and I hear changes and on some days they suddenly sounded similar.
That being said, I still had cables that were around 10years+ sticking around to remind me that was not the case, I stuck my original westone um3x cable to my Mentor and no matter which day or how crappy my ears were at the time, the old cable simply made my Mentor way way worst in every aspect possible.
I wholly believe that, using an upgraded cable in general has a mixture of both biological and technical aspects, so your brains, your eardrums and the actual material all plays the part. The material provides a constant change to sound, the eardrums sometimes work better on some days than other to hear the actual improvements made by the cables, and the brain is the icing on top. I think doing a blind test is not as effective as doing a graph test, since we're trying to prove the scientific aspects of how cable materials and composition affect sound here. Would love to see someone post a graph test with a bunch of cables with the same iem, maybe that could give us more insight into this conversation.
Absolutely, resistance of cables is a key technical parameter, and psychoacoustics, where visual and tactile impressions strongly affect sound perception, since a lot of brain processing is involved inculding preconditioning (the latter is to me largely responsible for "burning" experience).
As I mentioned many times before, it is all about shopping therapy and socialising. This is why the tangible and the truth is often ignored here, or even deliberately avoided. Most of the time the subjectivity is used as a mask of this avoidance, and to create an alternate reality - which is needed to justify the shopping spree.
I explained briefly why these measurements are meaningless and misleading.
Let me explain it now in more detail to, hopefully, close this subject.
1. Signal propagation in metal wires can be measured very precisely. One can take any arbitrary signal (pure shapes, sinusoidal, etc., or their combination, or any actual music files) and precisy compare signal in and signal out for any changes, distortions, etc. It can be done with a relatively simple equimpent (signal generator, ADC and/or oscilloscope). The fact that there are no such measurements documenting cable differences precusely are very telling, since not much difference other than simple attenuation due to cable resistance can be documented.
2. It is fare to point out that since we listens to transducers, then measuring the whole chain makes a good sense holistically. There, if measurements are done right (and it is a big "if", see below), significant effects of cables (due to their resistance, again) on low-impedance multidriver IEMs containing BAs are well-documented. In fact, CA alone could be responsible for triggering "cable listening" (and source selection, certainly) with their IEMs.
3. Now, the measurements cited by you have been performed using a coupler. Everyone using these couplers experienced how sensitive to the seal ( affecting bass) and insertion depth (treble and resonances), the measurements are. In fact, the same IEMs routinely receive different measurements by different people, a common not fully resolved problem with these coupler measurements. Standardization requires a lot of effort, and still is far from perfect.
To put it simply, I (and anyone else) can take any of three cables: A, B, and C and make three series of experiments with these couplers, where A can be demonstrated first to be "most bassy", then "most mid" and lastly "most trebly".
That what happens when the distortion of other parts of measuring chains are incomparably higher than what is tried to be measured in cables (an obvious problem of a weak link).
If cable manufacturers would try to post such measurements, they would be ripped apart, but hobbyist’s measurements are OK (and fun) as long as improper claims are not made.
I thought to tell a related story of my experience with clarinets, relevant to couplers, may be another time.
Yadda yadda yadda. Problem is you can't "shatter the psychoacoustic illusions" - last I checked, we listen with our ears, our nerves and our brains. No getting around that - so rather than use a set of assumptions to challenge empirical evidence - use the empirical evidence to challenge the assumptions!
Not being able to comment on your first sentence....then sure the brain response is complex, with the audio signal it also relies on previous memories (relative background, etc ), and then this response is also affected by visual and tactile stimuli.
That explains a significant part of how different people can hear different cables differently.
Some of this is people purchasing stuff for their companies. And many insiders get 15% discounts. Much of Astell&Kern is bought with VAT invoices.
So for example in Poland, deduct a 15% discount and then 23% VAT from the MSRP (divide by 1,23). Afterwards deduct 9-19% income tax (multiply by 0,91 or 0,81). You get the real price of the unit.
Of course a business has to somehow prove this unit is useful for their business purposes. But that's just what many people do.
Let me clarify that I'm referring to things like this:
And even this video supposedly contains some mistakes that were clarified by other physicists - please have a look at the comments.
P.S. You also try to imply that we don't really hear the differences in cables that we do. I assure you that some of us do. I find your mannerism subtly... impolite. I am sure you are not doing this on purpose, you just don't believe in this. I understand.
Let me explain with a personal example. I am partly colorblind. I have problems differentiating some shades of green and red, and several other colors. We always have fun with my daughters as I ask "what color are these leaves" or "what color are these trees" and they explan different shades to me. So... you probably see more colors than I do. But I would not imply that you don't, because so many people have proven to me what's their reality like.
Now that you read that we hear differences between cables, please do not imply that we don't just because you and some other people don't. Many non-audiophile people have such unsophisticated (or undeveloped) hearing that they don't even hear differences between different headphones. This just doesn't matter to them, as long as there's bass. I assume you definitely hear differences between headphones as you're on this forum.
We need to make reality simpler. We can't have everything matter to us, because that would be too much. That's a psychological response to your psychological arguments about blue cables sounding better because of subconciouss conotations. You just throw it from you life to make life simpler, that's a normal thing. I don't care about many things either, to stay calm and happy.
I respect that you don't hear differences between cables or sources or some other parts that don't matter to you, and you probably respect my color blindness. However, I personally (like I wrote several posts ago) hear huge differences between cables. It's a make or break of the experience for me. A synergistic match may be "S tier" for me, whereas a non-synergistic may fall as low as "B tier", for example. I wouldn't spend so much time on this if this wasn't important to me. Even my wife respects that
I am sorry for my mannerism, and great that most of the science was cleared out.
I did mention that I do hear the difference in cables, just nothing beyond their resistance.
Few years ago, I took a low-impedance all-BA with those "steely" treble BAs that are full of overtones and very sensitive to everything. Cheap stock cables were noticeably different, so I got a bunch of different cables and tested a lot (to the point of connector beeakage), also did the blind tests.
Furthermore, I performed few electrical measurements with cables, where I realized first of all that I had to have better sources.
Then I did psychoacoustic experiments, convincingly convincing myself of superiority of blue cables.
That is what I can hear (or imagine hearing), which is effectively the same for the subject of this discussion.
Paraphrasing other comments, I was in a great mood for the blue and convincingly enjoyed!
(I still do having cables of all shades of blue and many other colours for visual enjoyment of this hobby).
A great educational reference in your link. I answered wrong, thought of a different circuit.
Then, sure the AC (or broader, any arbitrary signal) propagation was figured out again with the phone lines a century ago, as the video actually mentions.
Most importantly, as per 1. in my reply above, with cables we can just precisely compare the signal in and signal out (of any arbitrary complexity) that makes cables clearly different from IEMs, where hearing is different to individual anatomy, perceptions, and even mood, and really hard to standardize (and great work, and great science with the new couplers has to be commended).
To sum up, any minute difference in signal propagation between cables can be measured precisely.
Lastly, I do believe that good cables are also very important to provide a comfortable fit for the best possible seal (and if fit and insertion depth are even slightly affected, here is another mighty factor to hear different cables differently).
For my best comfort, I can't stand plastic ear guides and always remove them. For more expensive cables, reshaping ear guides by heating them gently with a heat gun and rebending, to fit individual ear curvatures can be suggested to improve the comfort and fit.
