[scootermafia]

There's a difference between how silver measures and what technical details you can produce about it as an element, and how it actually affects audio systems.  People can say whatever they want about how silver measures with instrumentation, but the only instrument that matters is your ears, so make your own decisions.  To me, there is more to silver than just 5-6% additional conductivity.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

There's a difference between how silver measures and what technical details you can produce about it as an element, and how it actually affects audio systems.  People can say whatever they want about how silver measures with instrumentation, but the only instrument that matters is your ears, so make your own decisions.  To me, there is more to silver than just 5-6% additional conductivity.

If only our ears were as sensitive, accurate and reliable as instruments. Unfortunately our ears are plugged into a highly subjective and often unreliable thing called the human brain.
 
Which is all well and good for purely subjective evaluation. But it's worthless for determining whether or not there's any actual difference between the two beyond conductivity. And since no one has ever demonstrated there to be any difference beyond conductivity, I can't see any basis for a belief that there is.
 
se

 

[scootermafia]

What about that guy on the forums that did FR curves of his headphones with different cables and found differences?  I need to go catch up with that thread.  If a super-sensitive mic with powers beyond my ears can find a difference, then I'm content with that.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

What about that guy on the forums that did FR curves of his headphones with different cables and found differences?  I need to go catch up with that thread.  If a super-sensitive mic with powers beyond my ears can find a difference, then I'm content with that.

Those measurements were a mess. There were so many variables changing from one to the other that it's impossible to tell what was the cause of the differences that showed up in the measurements. It may have had absolutely nothing to do with the cables at all.
 
se

 

[Lenni]

Quote:

If only our ears were as sensitive, accurate and reliable as instruments. Unfortunately our ears are plugged into a highly subjective and often unreliable thing called the human brain.
 
Which is all well and good for purely subjective evaluation. But it's worthless for determining whether or not there's any actual difference between the two beyond conductivity. And since no one has ever demonstrated there to be any difference beyond conductivity, I can't see any basis for a belief that there is.
 
se

tell that to pigeons in the Antarctica during the breeding season when their back to their colony with food and had to find their chick among 400.000 other screaming chicks all packed together. I think the brain (human or not) is far more sensitive than any machine can ever be today. true, our brain is not reliable at giving exact numbers, and that's what machine are good for, but that's where it ends. personally, I'd trust my ears, when it comes to audio, before whatever any machine says.
 
in this forum we discuss cables and their attributes, such as sound differences, etc... - usually with others who have actually tried different cables - not measurable evidences. there's a forum call "science forum" for that.
please stop posting such post here. 

 
price, among other things, it's a difference between copper and silver. the latter being friggin' expensive.
 
 

 

[Tetsuma]

Yeah! Your science has no place in the church of cables.

 

[Lenni]

Quote:

Yeah! Your science religion has no place in the sound of cables.

FTFY 

 

[Rdr. Seraphim]

So, Steve, why do you make cables, and at the prices you charge ($300 - $600, and more)? Aren't you doing the same thing as everyone else in the business? What makes your cables audibly better than RS, AQ, Cardas, etc? They do have interesting packaging, unique names, appear to be well made (at least mostly in the USA), and interestingly, they get good reviews in the major audio e-zines (e.g. Q-Tao reviewed by SixMoons, PFO). Maybe they were set up to take advantage of the placebo effect from a marketing perspective? And, why do you hang out in the Sound Science forum giving the "impression" that cables don't make a difference, but sell your cables obviously targeted for the audiophile market (who else could afford them)? 
 
Quote:

If only our ears were as sensitive, accurate and reliable as instruments. Unfortunately our ears are plugged into a highly subjective and often unreliable thing called the human brain.
 
Which is all well and good for purely subjective evaluation. But it's worthless for determining whether or not there's any actual difference between the two beyond conductivity. And since no one has ever demonstrated there to be any difference beyond conductivity, I can't see any basis for a belief that there is.
 
se

 

 

[Steve Eddy]

 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Lenni /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
tell that to pigeons in the Antarctica during the breeding season when their back to their colony with food and had to find their chick among 400.000 other screaming chicks all packed together.

 
And then you have humans who have put photographs of themselves in their freezers and professed improvements in the sound of their systems.
 
Quote:

I think the brain (human or not) is far more sensitive than any machine can ever be today. true, our brain is not reliable at giving exact numbers, and that's what machine are good for, but that's where it ends.

 
Yet it's trivially easy to get people to subjectively perceive differences even when there are no actual differences.
 
So much for reliability.
 
Quote:

personally, I'd trust my ears, when it comes to audio, before whatever any machine says.

 
That depends on what you're trusting them to do. If you're trusting them to tell you what sounds good/bad/better to you, whatever the reason may be, that's fine. But if you're trusting them to determine whether or not there is an actual audible difference, that's a whole other matter.
 
Quote:

in this forum we discuss cables and their attributes, such as sound differences, etc... - usually with others who have actually tried different cables - not measurable evidences. there's a forum call "science forum" for that.
please stop posting such post here. 

 
Tell that to those who brought up technical/measurement issues. I was only responding to those posts.
 
se
 
 
 

 

[Lenni]

Quote:

And then you have humans who have put photographs of themselves in their freezers and professed improvements in the sound of their systems.
 
...
 
...
 
...
 

never heard of that before.... it does sound kind of nutty.
 
 
can't argue with the rest.
 
 
so, we're not expecting to see Q-Audio's silver/silver-plated cables in a near future then, if ever?
 

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

So, Steve, why do you make cables, and at the prices you charge ($300 - $600, and more)?

The cables that I make and sell are the cables I first and foremost designed and made for myself. One has to earn a living and I prefer earn a living doing something I enjoy rather than something that simply makes money. Audio has been a love of mine since I was a kid and that's the area I most enjoy earning a living doing.
 
As for prices, prices are dictated by their cost to produce along with a sufficient profit to assure that the business is sustainable. The cables require a significant amount of hand labor and that accounts for a good portion of the pricing. I'd tried having them machine made to reduce the amount of hand labor, but the litz wire that I like doesn't get along well with the process of braiding cotton over it (for some reason it causes the litz wire to become kinked and twisted). So the prices I'm asking aren't for any lack of trying to make them lower.
 
Quote:

Aren't you doing the same thing as everyone else in the business?

 
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Care to elaborate a bit?
 
Quote:

What makes your cables audibly better than RS, AQ, Cardas, etc?

 
I don't recall making any such claim so I'm not sure why you're asking this.
 
Quote:

They do have interesting packaging, unique names, appear to be well made (at least mostly in the USA), and interestingly, they get good reviews in the major audio e-zines (e.g. Q-Tao reviewed by SixMoons, PFO). Maybe they were set up to take advantage of the placebo effect from a marketing perspective?

 
If I were to take such a cynical approach, I would be selling quite a different cable than I am now and marketing it in quite a different way.
 
As I said above, the cables I make and sell are first and foremost the cables I designed and made for myself. The only marketing is to simply say what they are, what they're made of and what they cost. In fact the other day someone suggested that perhaps I suck at marketing. To that I replied that perhaps I do, and that given what marketing has become these days, I would take some pride in that.
 
Quote:

And, why do you hang out in the Sound Science forum giving the "impression" that cables don't make a difference, but sell your cables obviously targeted for the audiophile market (who else could afford them)?

 
All I've said is that to date, no one has ever demonstrated actual audible differences between cables, save for instances where the measured differences were within currently known audible thresholds. That's just a simple statement of fact.
 
As for my cables, the primary target is myself. And my pursuit of audio is not a utilitarian, objective pursuit but rather a wholly subjective pursuit. All I care about at the end of the day is the subjective pleasure and enjoyment I get, regardless of what the reasons for it might be. And the cables I designed give me the greatest pleasure sonically, aesthetically and philosophically. Do they make an audible difference? I don't know. Nor do I really care. I'm only concerned with the subjective pleasure I get from them at the end of the day.
 
se
 
 

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

never heard of that before.... it does sound kind of nutty.
 

Because it is nutty (do a bit of reading up on Peter Belt).
 
But it illustrates quite well that you can literally make up most anything and some number of people will say it made a difference, which further illustrates that our subjective perceptions simply aren't as reliable as we'd like to believe they are.
 
Quote:

so, we're not expecting to see Q-Audio's silver/silver-plated cables in a near future then, if ever?

 
'Fraid not. Sorry.

 
se
 
 

 

[scootermafia]

Hold on guys, I've got to check the time on my Clever Little Clock.

 

[sridhar3]

Quote:

But it illustrates quite well that you can literally make up most anything and some number of people will say it made a difference, which further illustrates that our subjective perceptions simply aren't as reliable as we'd like to believe they are.

 
http://cgi.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/auc.pl?accstwek&1322188223

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Hold on guys, I've got to check the time on my Clever Little Clock.

Has your Clever Little Clock been treated with the Telepotation Tweak?

 
se