[Steve Eddy]

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Is it speculation to think that if I drop a cable I think it it will accelerate towards the earth at 9.8 m/s^2?

Yes. Unless you plan on doing it in a vacuum.

 
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[Happy Camper]

Something mentioned by Aimlink in one of these cable threads that makes sense. We don't all talk in the same language when it comes to sound. Nobody took a class to listen (except professionals), we have all learned on the fly on our own gear. We all use different gear, environment, material and listen as we've learned. To be able to communicate, we have to learn the same language.

 

[BIG POPPA]

Happy Camper you are absolutely right. If you can't efficiently communicate what you are listening to? How can anyone listen for those things that got your attention? Communication is just as important as the music and the gear.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Point taken about communication. This is one argument for scientific measurement - someone can measure a resistor at 100 Ohms, and I can independently do the same with my own equipment. This is why I don't entirely trust subjective experience. Subjectively, a piece of music might be enjoyable one day and not the next. It has everything to do with my state of mind and nothing with the music or gear. It is very difficult to calibrate the self against a musical benchmark.

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

Point taken about communication. This is one argument for scientific measurement - someone can measure a resistor at 100 Ohms, and I can independently do the same with my own equipment. This is why I don't entirely trust subjective experience. Subjectively, a piece of music might be enjoyable one day and not the next. It has everything to do with my state of mind and nothing with the music or gear. It is very difficult to calibrate the self against a musical benchmark.

Exactly.  That's why we need objective measurements.  Just because we don't have the tools to completely quantify the listening experience right now, doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to try, or continue to use the ones we do have.

 

[Steve Eddy]

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Exactly.  That's why we need objective measurements.  Just because we don't have the tools to completely quantify the listening experience right now, doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to try, or continue to use the ones we do have.

Yeah, but before you can attempt to quantify something, you first have to determine that there's something there to quantify in the first place.
 
Otherwise, you can end up doing nothing more than chasing your tail.
 
That's why until someone finally steps up to the plate and establishes some actual audible difference, this train's not going anywhere except perhaps the Twilight Zone.
 
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[goraman]

 
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I think one of things that leads to confusion when it comes to issues such as these is a lack of general understanding of the nature of hearing.
 
Hearing takes place in the brain, not the ears.  The ears essentially transducers. They convert periodic fluctuations in air pressure over a certain range (i.e., "sound") into nerve impulses. The ear itself is a transducer, like a microphone. It's principle is quite different from any electrical transducer that is commonly used as a microphone, but nonetheless it is a transducer. But the experience of "hearing" is not just transduction of sound into nerve impulses- it is the processing of those impulses by the highly adaptable systems in the brain that comprises hearing.
 
Brain systems interact with one another quite strongly. Things like "ideas" and "emotions" which are present in the brain have an impact on things like hearing. Quite a bit of this interaction is beyond conscious control.  You can try as hard as you wish to be objective, but you cannot stop the various other things going on in your brain from having an effect on your perception. The process of  hearing is actually modified by other activities in the brain. Some of this is under conscious control- for example you can concentrate on certain sounds, and "tune out" others- but quite a lot of the brain activity interaction that takes place when we hear is not under conscious control at all.  There are various biases that color judgement which have an effect on HEARING - not just an effect on the JUDGEMENT OF HEARD SOUNDS- but on the the BRAIN PROCESS OF HEARING ITSELF.
 
Thus, if you are convinced that CABLE A sounds "brighter" than CABLE B, you will ACTUALLY HEAR a change in sound when you know you are listening to CABLE A. This is not a change in "objective reality" of course, but in your brain's processing of an input stimulated by objective reality.  I am not saying you "think" or "feel" that CABLE A will sound brighter- I am saying it will ACTUALLY SOUND BRIGHTER TO YOU because of the way the brain works.  This is totally beyond your control.  Human beings CANNOT will themselves to be objective in this regard.  Our "human hardware" is not built to allow this.  So the folks who say they ACTUALLY HEARD a difference in CABLE A  vs CABLE  B are right- they DO hear a difference.  However, this difference is based on factors in their brains and not on an aspect of objective reality.
 
Their ability to hear a difference between CABLE A and CABLE B will disappear in a blind test.  The difference they hear is related to things going on in their brain, and once they don't know which cable they are hearing their brain will no longer produce the sensation of hearing a brighter sound from CABLE A.    This is why the "subjectivists" say that blind testing doesn't work- because it does actually change the way they hear the cables. But since this change is in their brains and not part of the actual audio signal carrying properties of the cable, "objectivists" would say that the cables actually do NOT differ in sound.
 
This is a phenomena related to placebo effect.  Placebo effect is not "imaginary" - it is a REAL effect, but it takes place in the BRAIN and not in 'objective reality.'  There is a difference between "imaginary' and 'in the brain,' though this difference is conceptually a subtle one and is something that most folks debating this issue don't grasp.
 
So, if you listen to a certain cable and decide it has a certain sound quality, that sound quality is real as far as your hearing is concerned. This is related not to the properties of the cable, however, but to the properties of human perception. The difference in sound that you experience is not related to objective properties of the cable, but to conditions set up in your brain by a complex collection of cultural, educational, emotional and intellectual processes. 
 
So, in a sense the subjectivists and the objectivists are BOTH right.  Listeners can have an experience of sonic differences that are quite real to them, but if they did not know which cable they were hearing these differences  vanish.
 
The BRAIN is the issue here, the electrical properties of the cable itself are not involved. 
 
Of course, some cables DO have high enough inductance and / or capacitance to have an electrical impact on the audio signal- quite often this is intentionally introduced by the manufacturer.  I've seen speaker cables that have L/C networks built into a "pod" or other so-called "coupling module" - the manufacturers give these networks some very fancy and magical names- but in fact all they are is a kind of filter. These are TONE CONTROLS which are built into the cables, and so of course they will change the audio signal being carried by the cable.
 
But given a cable that is designed to carry the signal without changing it - which is what almost all interconnect and speaker wires do- it has been shown over and over again that in blind tests no listener can distinguish between cables.
 
On the other hand, if you've paid $1,000 for 3 feet of wire, and the cables seem very well made when you handle them, and you're read that others review these cables highly, and you've read the manufacturers claims regarding "propagation speed" or "conductor geometry" etc you will very likely hear a difference when you know you are listening through these cables. 

Brilliant...
This is most likely the best argument for differences I have ever read.
Differences procived by the listener that is.
Thank you for putting it in simple terms.
 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

 
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Yeah, but before you can attempt to quantify something, you first have to determine that there's something there to quantify in the first place.
 
Otherwise, you can end up doing nothing more than chasing your tail.
 
That's why until someone finally steps up to the plate and establishes some actual audible difference, this train's not going anywhere except perhaps the Twilight Zone.
 
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The pro-cable side say there is an actual audible difference because they can hear it. I am an anti-cable, but will readily admit that I can be made to hear differences between cables in the right conditions as set by pro-cablers. In a way that is establishing some audible difference. Is psychoacoustic/placebo or measurement/blind test actual?
 
I say the real problem is that the pro-side's actual is psychoacoustic/placebo, but many will just not accept/admit to that.

 

[Steve Eddy]

 
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The pro-cable side say there is an actual audible difference because they can hear it.

Well, they perceive differences, but perceiving a difference isn't necessarily the same as an actual audible difference. There's the perception of a difference in both cases, but the underlying question is whether or not the perception is due to purely psychological issues or if it's due to actual audible stimulus.
 
 
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I am an anti-cable, but will readily admit that I can be made to hear differences between cables in the right conditions as set by pro-cablers. In a way that is establishing some audible difference. Is psychoacoustic/placebo or measurement/blind test actual?

 
No, that's not establishing an actual audible difference.
 
To do that you need to adequately control for the ambiguities of the human subjective experience. And that means some form of blind testing.
 
 
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I say the real problem is that the pro-side's actual is psychoacoustic/placebo, but many will just not accept/admit to that.

 
You can't really say that. All you can do is say that to date no one has established actual audible differences.
 
The problem is that they won't even consider it as a possibility. To many, it's little more than religious dogma. And you're simply not going to be able to get through to those people.
 
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[Prog Rock Man]

How many anti-cablers admit to being able to hear differences in sighted tests?
 
I am coming form the other point of view. It has been argued that ant-cablers condition themselves to not hear a difference.
 
In as much as I have failed and suspect strongly I would keep on failing blind tests, I am sure if a test was sighted I would start to perceive differences. I am thinking of a situation where I was given a loan of some very expensive ICs or headphone cable (£500 plus minimum).

 

[Prog Rock Man]

Some people go just too far to prove their point..........................
 
     

 

[Uncle Erik]

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How many anti-cablers admit to being able to hear differences in sighted tests?
 
I am coming form the other point of view. It has been argued that ant-cablers condition themselves to not hear a difference.
 
In as much as I have failed and suspect strongly I would keep on failing blind tests, I am sure if a test was sighted I would start to perceive differences. I am thinking of a situation where I was given a loan of some very expensive ICs or headphone cable (£500 plus minimum).

I haven't been able to hear differences.  At one meet, I use what was (IIRC) a $6,000+ power cord on my rig.  I switched up with my 99 cent surplus power cord and didn't hear a difference.
 
I agree with you, though, that it is possible that my biases keep me from hearing a difference.
 
Though if there was a difference, I wonder why I shut them out.  At one time, I was a bit skeptical of the difference between amplifiers.  However, I was surprised to find them.  When I upgraded from the Sony SCD-CE595 to a Marantz SA8001, I was a bit disappointed to find them sounding very, very similar.  But both sounded very good, so I kept the CE595 around.
 
As I said before, I wish I could discern differences in cables - both heard and tested - if they actually exist.  I'd start up a company to sell them (at fair prices, no less) if I could nail down a way to research cables.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

If I won a pair of Kimber Select KS-1011 interconnects, (0.5m would do in my setup, so that is £636.00) compared to my DIY ones (which if I include everything it took to make them cost £70), I would use the Kimbers and I would be totally convinced they had made a significant night and day difference. I would also refuse to do blind tests so as not to shatter the illusion.

 

[milosz]

Quote:

If I won a pair of Kimber Select KS-1011 interconnects, (0.5m would do in my setup, so that is £636.00) compared to my DIY ones (which if I include everything it took to make them cost £70), I would use the Kimbers and I would be totally convinced they had made a significant night and day difference. I would also refuse to do blind tests so as not to shatter the illusion.

Your wonderfully complex and amazing brain would dutifully allow you to experience more sonic pleasure through these cables, too, except I'm afraid that you may "know too much" and so this additional improvement in listening would likely be slight, at best. 

 
What I wonder is, where do they find all all these blind people to do this testing?  I hope they're well paid. 
 

 

[Prog Rock Man]

I fear that you are right. It is blind testing, not testing the blind...