[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

I am afraid to say anything against cables. Last time I did, I was found guilty of being a fanatic for saying that  I could not believe anybody's claims without objective evidence. Burned at the stake.

Well sure. The believers are quite the religious lot.

 
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[BIG POPPA]

Everything in the audio chain will color the sound. OK, the first thing to understand, some things will color more than others like headphones, amp, and source. What will color less is cables, fuses, and tweaks. Getting familiar with the gear you have and what every piece does to the sound will get you tuned to any changes in your system. I use a Oyaide R1 in the wall, A Synergistic Research QLS 6 strip, audio grade fuses, plus the rest of my gear. In my home I keep all the cables off the carpet. A nasty source of static electricity. I am real picky with gear in my home. When something is off I can tell. So when some say you can't tell the difference with cables, like it is scientifically impossible? I get a good laugh. Those people do not have a clue how to get really intimate with their gear and really don't have a clue about critical listening. Listening to 30 second passages for certain elements. Cable will add there signature like a flavor. How do you test flavor? Especially listening  to music? You don't. You learn how to clearly describe it and see if anyone else can truly understand and get the same experience listening to the same passage.

 

[gilency]

Quote:

Well sure. The believers are quite the religious lot. 

 

 
 

 

[Steve Eddy]

 

 
Quote:

HA! Good one!
 
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[Steve Eddy]

 
Quote:

Everything in the audio chain will color the sound.

That's certainly true for some people as far as their subjective experience goes. But their subjective experience doesn't extend into the objective realm and those claiming it does without establishing actual audible differences is just hand-waving. And there's already been over 30 years of that. It's getting tiresome.
 
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[BIG POPPA]

With your thinking, we would only need one pair of headphones because they all sound the same? All CD players, all amps? Come on now?
 
Quote:

 

That's certainly true for some people as far as their subjective experience goes. But their subjective experience doesn't extend into the objective realm and those claiming it does without establishing actual audible differences is just hand-waving. And there's already been over 30 years of that. It's getting tiresome.
 
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[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

With your thinking, we would only need one pair of headphones because they all sound the same? All CD players, all amps? Come on now?
 

Stop putting words in my mouth.
 
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[BIG POPPA]

Please say what you mean so there is no confusion?

What are you saying then?
 
Quote:

Stop putting words in my mouth.
 
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[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Please say what you mean so there is no confusion?

What are you saying then?
 

I have already said what I meant.
 
If there's any confusion, it's the result of your your trying to read between the lines when what I have said has been simple and straightforward and there's nothing between the lines to read.
 
Try going back over what I wrote.
 
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[Prog Rock Man]

When someone comes forward with a blind test and does not disclose exactly how it was conducted, it is perfectly reasonable to ask questions. Nick_Charles would have asked the same questions of a negative test as he has of Tigzstudio's positive one.
 
Theearbone has also made a valid point about the need to have blind tests conducted in as rigorous a fashion as possible.
 
The anti-cable side want good evidence and any apparent criticism is purely to get such evidence.
 
 

 

[khaos974]

Quote:

Exactly, in order to do the measuring you need equipment that almost no one has, therefore its expensive.  Who has an ABX comparator sensitive enough to keep up with high end headphones?

 
Yes, it's called "friend/significant other/ people in a meet willing to do the plugging and unplugging".
 
Quote:

Everything in the audio chain will color the sound.

Yes, the most coloring agent being your brain, subconscious biases and preferences included, hence the need to remove this sound coloring factor.

 

[TheAttorney]

One thing that strikes me about these two (almost interchangeable) concurrent threads is that there are not two opposing camps to this debate. There are as many variants as there are participants. Some pro-cablers don’t think DBT’s are a reliable way of proving cable differences and some do. Some DBT-sceptics don’t believe in cables. Some think there can be amp/dac differences, but not cables. Some think there are analogue cable differences, but not digital cables.
 
Even the apparently small number of pro-cablers in this thread are completely different to each other. BIG POPPA enjoys meets and frequent cables comparisons, and I took 10 years to change my last cable set. I’ve found I’m no good at A/B comparisons of ANY neutral component and need a long time to get used to my current system before doing any test. When testing, I’ve found it best to not focus on specifics, but just enjoy the music. BIG POPPA tests by focusing on certain specifics of short excerpts.
 
As posted before, I’m confident I would fail a DBT, so there’s no point in me participating in one - although of course there’s a chance I could be pleasantly surprised. That’s just me. Everyone else is different to one degree or other. Seems like BIG POPPA has a much better chance of succeeding in such tests. It would interesting to see the results of whatever is set up next. But for me, the test is as much about how people react to such situations as it is about the components themselves.  
 
The only common ground I think is that we love music and are interested in the best way of increasing our enjoyment of it. The main difference is on agreeing what is that best way? It still puzzles me how people can get so uptight if the "opponent" doesn't accept their perfectly formed logic. Big deal, life's like that. One thing’s for sure, continuing a stance of “us and them” point scoring doesn’t work – because there is no “them”, just an infinite variety of individuals.

 

[leeperry]

 

 
It still puzzles me how people can get so uptight if the "opponent" doesn't accept their perfectly formed logic.

The major issue is that the believers wonder if the skeptics are deaf and/or trolling...and the latter always seem to imply that the former are delusional and gullible. If you can't hear any difference...good for you!

 

[anadin]

Even if one can hear a difference is it always for the better.

 

[Black Stuart]

No surprises then from the anti-cable crowd then.
 
Not one of them has answered my question - have you had a hearing test? if you don't know to what extent your hearing is impaired or otherwise of what value is your opinion both to yourself or anyone else. Indeed since so many can hear differences with cables if I was an anti-cable person I would immediately ask myself that question. To not ask that question which is both reasonable and rational implies you have a 'blind faith' in your ability to hear and is entirely un-scientific, or you are too frightened to find out. Imagine spouting anti-cable Kant for years and then finding out your hearing is crap.
 
No anti-cabler has answered my very simple questiuons about how an EGMS presents itself in space-time or how it travels via an i/c from start to finish - from which we can deduce that they hav'nt got a clue. If you really want to understand how anything actually works and to gain an in depth knowledge of the procedure then you must start with the very basic structure of the materials involved and yes  an EGMS does have a structure just like any other form of energy be it gas/liquid or solid - though in reality nothing is actually solid since everything that exists is dancing an 'atomic dance' - for a better understanding there are many books available for the layman to understand particle physics, one such is the brilliantly written (easy to understand) - The Dancing Wu-Li Masters.
 
Does copper/silver/SPC/aluminium/carbon behave differently when an EGMS travels through it - be it a cable or a cap or resistor. I'm being very specific in always using an electrically generated musical signal as the basis because that is what we are dealing with, so many are presenting suedo-intellectual arguments that are fine for use in a philisophical debate but not here on an audio specific forum.One such said that resistors are made to different tolerances and that they would then 'sound' different - EXACTLY - same goes for cables.
 
Some have raised the entirely appropriate point that it is not our ears which hear but the individual's brain. So, the individual hears through all the filters that they have aquired in living, through education/training/family/DNA etc. - that is what actually is hearing the music - all your life experience, the whole thing is what is actually listening to the music. The more rigid you are in how you 'look at or listen to '  life will determine what you hear or don't hear.
 
I found it ludicrous when the anti-cable crowd hide behind 'statistics'. I had an uncle who was a professional soldier before WW11. He knew that the suedo-intellectuals would die first - unable to deal with 'life in the moment' but what surprised him was how so many of his best intelligence gatherers/forward patrols were made up of men who had spent the whole of their lives before the war living in the east end of London - the poor could'nt afford holidays in the country, indeed could'nt afford holidays at all. A forward patrol literally lives or dies by it's ability to extract the maximum info from  everything that is going on around them - the ability to hear is crucial to staying alive and here were these East-Enders who had lived their lives in noisy environments  yet, when nec. developed 'bat's ears'. Many of these men who survived the war, simply could'nt handle the noisy city and made lives for themselves in the country. When I worked breifly in Franco's fascist Spain I ran into a bunch of WW11 American vets in Pamplona. Guess what, there was a CSM (same rank as my uncle) who had exactly the same experience with men who had never left New York city before the war. Both these English and Yanks 'developed' the ability to hear  - it meant the difference between life and death.
 
On another thread is a guy called downsize - he ran a hi-fi business and as he said all his salesmen could tell the difference between cables - it's called training.His advice for those who cannot hear the differences with cables - take up another hobby.
 
Someone said my last post was emotional, not by my standards it was'nt but it said a lot about them - listen up - music should be an emotional experience if it's not are you sure your engaged in the right hobby?
 
So come on all the anti-cablers at least have the balls to say whether you have ever had a hearing test  or not. If you run away from this question all you are doing is exposing your fear, which is probably the basis for your anti-cable views. Take the test and be truthful with the results - you claim to stand by the science - now test your hearing and let us know.