Why pick on cables ?

[castleofargh]

Honestly this cable debate has gone on for a lifetime of time. There is pretty much no end in sight, not in our lifetimes anyway. There is really no reason to get emotional about it, or to write insults or criticisms to another member. We are all in this audiophile thing together. Have fun!

I’m sure if you came over to the house and visited me, the human ideas of comradely would surface and take over. This cable business would become a small or even a non existent issue. After dinner and a beer we could recoil into having fun with audio equipment!

You do understand that I have spent countless hours trying to get my head around this cable question, and I should be embarrassed to post here? Really? If anything this is the perfect place to share my opinion, that’s what the forums of Head-Fi are for. You don’t have to read what I post. Remember the simple cause is the greatest motivator in human emotion/psychology. That means a cause creates this force and creates drama. Maybe this is a holdover from human evolution, enabling the pack attitude in groups of humans to survive, and for good reason in our history. But it is not needed as much anymore, and shows up as a burden at times.

I agree about direct interaction vs forum. Things tend to be more relaxed overall IRL. Although, nobody got punched through the web.^_^
I even think the objective side is partially at fault for often ignoring some of the well understood possibilities because bad testing is so much more likely as an explanation. There is being statistically right, which we are, and there is being right about one specific case. And about that, we usually never know(because we're not the ones having those gears and that experience).
On the other hand, we have people who decide a sound changes with no objective evidence of it, just the feeling that it does, which as you know is a problem because humans are going to human and that includes a long list of mistakes and self delusions about reality.

So here is what we can consider:
-1 wire, and its 3 electrical characteristics, better modeled as series of short components with their own 3 electrical specs, but assuming we're not changing everything in a meaningful way each time we move the wire slightly(it does happen to matter a lot on a few cables, and I'd always suggest running away from that crap, period). In that system it's easy enough, for a given frequency, we have the amp, that wire, and the driver/load. Most of the time we count the wire as part of the load, but if it's about swapping wires, then the question of where we put wire in the calculations becomes relevant(depends if we're looking at changes from the amp or changed from the transducer). If we're not lazy, we look at both. We rarely do because we don't care much about the amplifier side until it reaches its own limits. That alone is an issue because obviously someone of an objective mind or just someone caring about fidelity and stability would try to avoid using an amplifier under conditions that might push it to its limit. For the rest of the population, do they even know when that can happen? I can just measure a few things and know if my amp is struggling at a given voltage into a given load.

-real situation, 3 or 4 wires, maybe even 5 wires for fun. Now we can start wondering about some interactions and how bad the insulation might be, how much the way the wires are breaded might affect the electrical properties. If there is a shield and who (almost arbitrarily for IEMs) decided where to connect it to the ground(one side, which one? Both side? Why? Nowhere, it's just a metal wrap for no clear purpose). That gets complicated fast and beside measuring stuff, I don't think it's easy to model more than straight flat cables. Most of the time this is irrelevant(because of the magnitudes involved), but when the load is ludicrously small and current flow gets pretty high(compared to voltage), then it can become audible as some form of crosstalk for example. And if the amplifier itself sucked in that variable, the total can become a clear sound difference for sure. That's one aspect we tend to straight up ignore on the objective side because again, we would tend to avoid getting into those circumstances, and we have no reason to seek cables that will be vastly different electrically from the default one. I haven't purchased any IEM going under 8ohm in years(well TBH I've sent back most of the IEMs I did purchase in the last years)? Yes, that means I'm avoiding a lot of the modern products, as extremely low impedance is now very common in the IEM market. WE on the more objective side, probably also wouldn't get an amplifier or DAP if it already sucks bad at dealing with crosstalk unloaded(the only spec we're likely to find online).

-contacts and plugs. Not all plugs are equal, On that I'm with you. We probably don't agree on why, but to me, plugs are usually more important than the wire. Good plugs from a brand you can trust and whatever wire at about the right gauge and right type for its given purpose, that tends to make a fine cable in my experience. It's good to have certain mechanical wire properties if we move the wire a lot or people walk over it, but otherwise that's basically my position on cables.
About the metal at the plug, I have to say that in my experience it rarely does much of anything. I only have one single exception, the default cable of the Sennheiser IE80(not the 80s that's back to using some yellow stuff that I imagine being gold plating or whatever). It's a metal grey color(no idea what's on the surface), and into almost all my DAPs, after a few days being plugged, something seems to oxidize between the plugs(or it has a magical ability to attract small dust?), and when turning the plug, it sings me the song of its cable people. In this case, static noises. I just have to pull the plug, rub it on my shirt, plug it back, and no more static noises when turning the plug, until next time. Now that's a sound impact from the metal of the plug that I fully recognize and dislike.
Otherwise... beside maybe some dimension differences not giving as good an electrical contact as it should(in turn that could increase the impedance and matter audibly in some extreme scenarios like high power or again, those damn extreme IEMs), I don't believe in the metal, and even less so the platting metal choice, to change sound. I just don't see how that could create an audible level of change unless one metal is made a copper+cardboard+sand alloy.

All in all, the sane thing to do, IMO, is to simply settle on a sound system and measure stuff. For big stuff that will be audible, a little mic+coupler should do it. It's also easier to try and translate into audibility. For smaller, more precise measurements, it would be better to go with some adapter that allows to measure at the IEM plug(without room and mic noise/disto). But then finding causal relation to something we might hear is probably more challenging.
So we're back to listening and listening conditions, the true reason this debate never ends. Because almost nobody does that correctly for cables. Can we even find 5 people on the forum who did an actual blind test with IEM cables where the volume was matched at the IEM itself, and the cables were swapped blind by someone else, without distinctive sound, touch, or noticeable cable weight or stiffness difference? I doubt it.
Maybe we need to come up with a rig where both cables are plugged to an adapter and someone controls the randomization(in a non-audible way, it can't just be a loud switch that goes back and forth, and the connections must really be cut between the cables, we can't just leave most wires connected and like, just cut one ground, because IDK what that could do electrically, probably not much, but why take a chance?).

Now what I do believe and, really, know to be true, is that not a single "yet to be discovered" electrical variable is causing whatever people hear or think they hear. Anyone going for that explanation has already lost the argument about audibility. Scientists aren't the type to just sit in front of something with consistent testable impact and ignore that it exists. If people could hear something beyond what can be measured, and it was clear they didn't dream it or hear it with their eyes, then they would have long come up with some placeholder name like they do in astronomy with dark energy, dark matter and all that crap. Something causes something else, and we don't know what it is => "dark something". That's just what they do.
We don't have any "dark something" equivalent for electrical wires, because we have no evidence of something happening that doesn't follow the known models. Audiophiles and some sighted impressions never have and never will qualify as evidence of something else happening in the wires, for good reasons. So let's just drop that hypothesis and the logical fallacy about anything being possible because we don't know everything.

 

[Davesrose]

I often have wondered how I'd interact with everyone here if we were regulars at a bar. While bigshot and I have engaged in pedantic arguments, we also have shared interests to go on about (BBQ, art, cinema, animation): I think we could be friends in person. gregorio: I know he's extremely knowledgeable with audio topics, but also can really focus on semantics. He's the one I'd really be interested about having a live conversation. Redcarmoose: I think his avatar of Dali might really how he is in person. Eccentric and passionate. Personally, I don't understand arguments about needing to buy expensive cables to alter sound. Back when I tried that for silver headphone cables, I was disappointed. Because I found "audiophile" cables were also boutique, so they had really bad termination for a silver cable to interface (hence one possible reason for audibles claiming a difference). When trying to get a good silver interconnect vs copper interconnect-couldn't hear any difference (which also measures scientifically given these really short cable runs and amplification for headphones). Personally, I also don't understand spending thousands on one headphone: I'm "audiophile" enough to spend under $1000 on a brand's headphone to hear how it's tuning is (and that measurably is the biggest difference). But if we're getting into how much disposable income are you willing to spend, I side with photo-fi. I've spent a lot on photo gear for what's been mainly hobby/ancillary to my actual work. But it's also something that all my family and friends enjoy as well. Granted also I homebrew, which I've spent enough to have beer on draft: and free beer gets you even more friends. So if it were possible to get everyone from west coast USA to Europe together...I can supply several styles of beer

 

[gregorio]

Physicists are changing the understood paradigm all the time?

No they’re not! The “understood paradigm” was set in 1862 by Maxwell’s Laws (Equations) and from those equations Oliver Heaviside derived the Telegraph’s Equations in the 1880’s, which define the behaviour of electromagnetic signals in cables. Since then there was the formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics by Feynman and others in the late 1940’s but that didn’t change the understood paradigm of Maxwell’s Laws, it just expanded them to also be applicable at quantum scales. So how is not changing the paradigm for over 160 years, changing the paradigm “all the time”?

What about when CERN made lead into gold when lead nuclei traveling at almost the speed of light became the extra protons to be measured using a new mechanism, as gold.

What has that got to do with electromagnetic signals travelling down a cable, do you think audiophile cables are large hadron colliders?

The understanding of everything is not always cemented in place.

We’re not trying to force “everything” through a cable, only electromagnetic signals. So we don’t need to understand what happens to lead nuclei at TeV energy levels, what happened at the Big Bang, what’s inside a black hole or anything else, we only need to understand the behaviour of electromagnetic signals in cables and we have understood that for 140 years!

Honestly this cable debate has gone on for a lifetime of time.

No it hasn’t, it ended before the turn of the 1900’s when the Telegrapher’s Equations were proven true and demonstrated in practical commercial applications. It was rekindled in the 1970’s in the audiophile community, with the advent of the first audiophile cables, because the average audiophile didn’t even know of the existence of the Telegrapher’s Equations, let alone understand them, and they still don’t. This allows audiophile cable retailers to continue to push the same BS marketing which is why the debate still exists in the audiophile world. Fortunately though, that’s the only place, the rest of the audio world (and EE worlds) do know. That’s why there is no debate and no one other than audiophiles use audiophile cables!

G

 

[Davesrose]

Redcarmoose said:
What about when CERN made lead into gold when lead nuclei traveling at almost the speed of light became the extra protons to be measured using a new mechanism, as gold.

What has that got to do with electromagnetic signals travelling down a cable, do you think audiophile cables are large hadron colliders?

Actually, I think this is the only interesting point. So throughout time it's been alchemy to turn lead into gold. And CERN did it! Never mind that it's about particle physics and it was stable for under a second....lead to gold! Stable element that is conductive for any consumer audio applications: copper-check.

 

[Redcarmoose]

Actually, I think this is the only interesting point. So throughout time it's been alchemy to turn lead into gold. And CERN did it! Never mind that it's about particle physics and it was stable for under a second....lead to gold! Stable element that is conductive for any consumer audio applications: copper-check.

Yes! For a documented moment. Though alchemy and books like Paracelsus Alchemy are dated and comical at times, but maybe some of it is true, I read it 20 years ago. The predecessor of modern science!

 

[gregorio]

Actually, I think this is the only interesting point. … Stable element that is conductive for any consumer audio applications: copper-check.

Sure, I didn’t say it wasn’t interesting. I just don’t see what slamming together streams of quark-gluon plasma at Tera-Electron Volt energy levels has to do with audiophile cables. Although, if an audiophile had one of those huge heavy audiophile amps (and if it could manage a 120 MegaWatt output), along with some seriously insensitive IEMs, who knows? lol

G

 

[castleofargh]

Sure, I didn’t say it wasn’t interesting. I just don’t see what slamming together streams of quark-gluon plasma at Tera-Electron Volt energy levels has to do with audiophile cables. Although, if an audiophile had one of those huge heavy audiophile amps (and if it could manage a 120 MegaWatt output), along with some seriously insensitive IEMs, who knows? lol

G

You only say that because you never listen to music inside a particle accelerator.

 

[Davesrose]

Sure, I didn’t say it wasn’t interesting. I just don’t see what slamming together streams of quark-gluon plasma at Tera-Electron Volt energy levels has to do with audiophile cables. Although, if an audiophile had one of those huge heavy audiophile amps (and if it could manage a 120 MegaWatt output), along with some seriously insensitive IEMs, who knows? lol

G

But you didn't address it (and is the only topic that's modern)....you continued with ad infinitum multiquotes about known conductivity. My post was about the only interesting thing I found with the exchange: magical alchemy. And yes, I was siding with you about how CERN developments won't have any innovations for cables-as copper is all we need for transducers. Recently we had to have a larger exchange about how the analog device does not reach the full dynamic range of the recorded format with an ADC (be it audio or photo). Sometimes your use of multi-quoting a post out of context also can be frustrating.

 

[gregorio]

But you didn't address it (and is the only topic that's modern)....you continued with ad infinitum multiquotes about known conductivity. … Recently we had to have a larger exchange about how the analog device does not reach the full dynamic range of the recorded format with an ADC (be it audio or photo). Sometimes your use of multi-quoting a post out of context also can be frustrating.

Huh?

G

 

[colonelkernel8]

Honestly this cable debate has gone on for a lifetime of time. There is pretty much no end in sight, not in our lifetimes anyway. There is really no reason to get emotional about it, or to write insults or criticisms to another member. We are all in this audiophile thing together. Have fun!

I’m sure if you came over to the house and visited me, the human ideas of comradely would surface and take over. This cable business would become a small or even a non existent issue. After dinner and a beer we could recoil into having fun with audio equipment!

You do understand that I have spent countless hours trying to get my head around this cable question, and I should be embarrassed to post here? Really? If anything this is the perfect place to share my opinion, that’s what the forums of Head-Fi are for. You don’t have to read what I post. Remember the simple cause is the greatest motivator in human emotion/psychology. That means a cause creates this force and creates drama. Maybe this is a holdover from human evolution, enabling the pack attitude in groups of humans to survive, and for good reason in our history. But it is not needed as much anymore, and shows up as a burden at times.

How very kumbaya of you. On the surface it's even agreeable, until you factor in the fact that you get paid by actors that are knowingly committing fraud and are using YOU to find post hoc justification for that fraud by insisting you're hearing differences you simply aren't.

For example: https://www.effectaudio.com/fusion-1

"The proprietary alchemic combination of the highest amount of material variations in our history - a luxurious blend of dual Gold-plated Silver materials alongside pure Silver and a carefully calculated ratio of close to a half a dozen Copper variations, including an improved ergonomic Solid Core Copper at its center. The blend presents a uniquely immersive sonic experience that envelops the listener with its wide all-encompassing soundstage featuring unparalleled resolution. Experience a harmonious concord between powerful, hypnotic resonance and enchanting, highly detailed treble energy with a smooth timber finish."

I'd love to see their "calculations" for that ratio. Or what the eff a "Copper variation" is. Is that like a Goldberg Variation? I love a nice woody finish on my headphone cables.

https://www.thetakeout.com/we-taste-wood-flavored-ice-cream-with-legit-s-dan-bakke-1798268477/

 

[bigshot]

If I had to choose between a flawed test and completely made up subjectivity, I’d tend to believe the flawed test first.

 

[Redcarmoose]

How very kumbaya of you. On the surface it's even agreeable, until you factor in the fact that you get paid by actors that are knowingly committing fraud and are using YOU to find post hoc justification for that fraud by insisting you're hearing differences you simply aren't.

For example: https://www.effectaudio.com/fusion-1



I'd love to see their "calculations" for that ratio. Or what the eff a "Copper variation" is. Is that like a Goldberg Variation? I love a nice woody finish on my headphone cables.

https://www.thetakeout.com/we-taste-wood-flavored-ice-cream-with-legit-s-dan-bakke-1798268477/

So wait, you mean 1/2 of Head-Fi are wrong. That all these people that are finding joy as just deluded and wrong? But of course because you can never hear a difference and modern science can not prove the difference, it is fraud? What about how with the very best of equipment modern science can not measure the Pace of music through an IEM. They have no way to measure Stage in an IEM. The is no way to measure Timbre of an IEM........etc etc....

Spoiler: Audiophile Words

Accurate - The music is (as much as possible) unaltered by the recording or playback equipment.

Aggressive - Forward and bright sonic character.

Airy - Spacious, typically referring to upper midrange and treble.

Ambience - The overall impression, feeling, or mood evoked by an environment or acoustical space, such as the performance hall in which a recording was made.

Analytical - Detailed.....typically thought of as neutral or bright.

Articulate - The overall ability to offer fast transients and efficient imaging of instruments.

Attack - The leading edge of a note and the ability of a system to reproduce the attack transients in music.

Attack (2) - The time taken for a musical note to reach its peak amplitude eg. notes will tend to sound more defined rather than blended with other notes.

Balance - Usually the tuning of the earphone. A well-balanced headphone would not have one particularly dominant frequency, but rather all would be “balanced.”

Bass - The audio frequencies between about 60Hz and 250Hz.The lower end frequency of human hearing. Bass can be measured in quantity (heaviness) and quality (clarity). Other bass descriptors are “muddy” and “boomy.”

Basshead - Emphasized Bass.

Bloated - Excessive mid bass around 250 Hz. Poorly damped low frequencies, low frequency resonance.

Blurred - Poor transient response. Vague stereo imaging, not focused.

Body - Fullness of sound. Substantialness of response.

Boomy - Excessive bass around 125 Hz. Typically edging into midrange and affecting pace.

Boxy - Having resonances as if the music were enclosed in a box. Sometimes an emphasis around 250 to 500 Hz. Often called cardboard box sounding, like boxes used as drums.

Breakup - When different points on the surface of a diaphragm begin to move out of sync, causing distortion. Breakup often occurs in dynamic drivers at high volumes as forces on the diaphragm increase. Breakup is less likely to occur at lower volumes or in planar magnetic or electrostatic headphone drivers.

Bright/Brightness - Boost in the upper frequencies or upper-mid range. Brightness is a feature enjoyed by many but walks a thin line to becoming unpleasant depending on the individual.

Brilliance - The 6kHz to 16kHz range controls the brilliance and clarity of sounds. Too much emphasis in this range can produce sibilance on the vocals.

Clear - Transparent.

Closed - A closed-in sound lacking in openness, delicacy, air, and fine detail usually caused by Roll-off above 10kHz; in contrast to Open.

Congestion - Poor clarity caused by overlapping sounds. Congested sound signatures lack detail and clarity, making it hard to hear separate instruments and may also be called muddy or muffled.

Coloration - The effect of a device on the music signal. The opposite of “neutral.” Various aspects can affect the tone, responsiveness or the frequency response of the music/audio.

Crisp - Clear.

Dark - A tonal balance that tilts downwards with increasing frequency. Opposite of bright. Weak high frequencies.

Decay - The fadeout of a note as it follows the attack.

Definition (or resolution) - The ability of a component to reveal the subtle information that is fundamental to high fidelity sound.

Delicate - High frequencies extending to 15 or 20 kHz without peaks.

Density - I personally started to use this word to describe note weight, and note authority.

Depth - A sense of distance (near to far) of different instruments.

Detail - The most delicate elements of the original sound and those which are the first to disappear with lesser equipment

Detailed - Easy to hear tiny details in the music; articulate. Adequate high frequency response, sharp transient response.

Dry - Lack of reverberation or delay as produced by a damped environment. May come across as fine grained and lean. Opposite of wet.

Dynamic - The suggestion of energy and wide dynamic range. Related to perceived speed as well as contrasts in volume both large and small. Still in the end this word has many interpretations.

Edgy - Too much high frequency response. Trebly. Harmonics are too strong relative to the fundamentals. Distorted, having unwanted harmonics that add an edge or raspiness.

Euphonic - An appealing form of distortion that generally enhances perceived fidelity, often ascribed to the harmonic elaborations of some valve amps.

Fast - Good reproduction of rapid transients which increase the sense of realism and "snap".

Focus - A strong, precise sense of image projection.

Forward(ness) - Similar to an aggressive sound, a sense of image being projected in front of the speakers and of music being forced upon the listener. The opposite would be “Laid-back".

Full - Strong fundamentals relative to harmonics. Good low frequency response, not necessarily extended, but with adequate levels around 100 to 300 Hz. Male voices are full around 125 Hz; female voices and violins are full around 250 Hz; sax is full around 250 to 400 Hz. Opposite of thin.

Grainy - A loss of smoothness resulting is a loss of clarity and transparency.

Grunt - Actually a guitar term intended to denote an authoritative and fast low end frequency response ability in hollow body jazz guitars.

Harsh - Too much upper midrange. Peaks in the frequency response between 2 and 6 kHz.

Highs - The audio frequencies above about 6000 Hz.

High Midrange (High Mids, Upper Mids) - The audio frequencies between about 2kHz and 6kHz.

Imaging - The sense that a voice or instrument is in a particular place in the room. Directly measured with square wave graphs and indicates transient edge response quality in the time domain.

Impedance - Indicates how much power is required for the driver. The higher the impedance, the more power is required to get the maximum quality and volume of sounds out of the driver. Electrical resistance to the flow of current in an AC circuit. The higher the impedance of the headphone, for instance, the less current will flow through it.

Layering - The reproduction of depth and receding distance, which audibly places the rows of performers one behind the other.

Laid-back - Recessed, distant-sounding, having exaggerated depth, usually because of a dished midrange. Compare "Forward".

Layering - The reproduction of depth and receding distance, which audibly places the rows of performers one behind the other.

Less-Tangibles - Everything other than FR, hence reverberations, texture, instrument timbre, soundstage etc…..etc.

Liquid - Textureless sound.

Low-Level Detail - The subtlest elements of musical sound, which include the delicate details of instrumental sounds and the final tail of reverberation decay.

Low Midrange (Low Mids) - The audio frequencies between about 250Hz and 2000Hz.

Lush - Harmonically complex, typicality thought of as thick with many additives. A rich tone and usually with some warmth to the overall presentation.

Metallic - Typically an overall sheen which can become part of an off timbre response.

Midrange (Mids) - The audio frequencies between about 250 Hz and 6000 Hz.

Musical (or musicality) - A sense of cohesion and subjective "rightness" in the sound.

Nasal - Reproduced sound having the quality of a person speaking with their nose blocked. Closed off; a measured peak in the upper midrange followed by a complimentary dip.

Naturalness - Realism.

Opaque - Unclear, lacking Transparency.

Open - Sound which has height and "air", relates to clean upper midrange and treble.

Pace - Often associated. with rhythm, a strong sense of timing and beat.

Physicality - Weight and realness, typicality used (by me) to describe bass, but can carry over to all frequencies. Female and male vocals could have physicality, if they sound real.

Piercing - Strident, hard on the ears, screechy. Having sharp, narrow peaks in the response around 3 to 10 kHz.

PRaT - Pace, rhythm and timing.

Presence Range - The presence range between 4kHz and 6kHz is responsible for the clarity and definition of voices and instruments. Increasing this range can make the music seem closer to the listener. Reducing the 5kHz content makes the sound more distant and transparent.

Presence - An emphasized instrument response around 5 kHz for most instruments, or around 2 to 5 kHz for kick drum and bass.

Punchy - Good reproduction of dynamics. Good transient response, with strong impact. Sometimes a bump around 5 kHz or 200 Hz.

Range - The distance between the lowest and highest tones.

Resolution - The clarity to separate and delineate musical information.

Reverb - Short for reverberation. A diminishing series of echoes spaced sufficiently closely in time that they merge into a smooth decay.

Rich - See Full. Also, having euphonic distortion made of even order harmonics.

Roll-off (Rolloff) - The gradual attenuation that occurs at the lower or upper frequency range of a driver, network, or system. The roll-off frequency is usually defined as the frequency where response is reduced by 3 dB.

Round - High frequency rolloff or dip. Not edgy.

Rhythm - The controlled movement of sounds in time.

Shrill - Strident, Steely.

Sibilant - The high unpleasant peaks that are usually unpleasant to the ear if too prevalent.

Sizzly - See Sibilant. Also, extra highs on cymbals.

Smeared - Lacking detail; poor transient response, too much leakage between microphones; poorly focused images.

Smooth - Describing the quality of sound reproduction having no irritating qualities; free from high-frequency peaks, and relaxing to listen to. Not necessarily a positive system attribute if accompanied by a slow, un-involved character.

Sound Signature - The unique intrinsic sound quality of a headphone, music player, DAC, or audio cable. Some audio products emphasize the higher treble ranges while others strengthen the bass. This overall sound profile of audio devices helps audiophiles fine-tune the listening experience by pairing the right headphone cable, DAC, or music player with their headphones.

Soundstage - An illusionary effect of headphones to produce a listening space front to back, up and down and right to left.

Speed - Pace and timing, can have a relationship with overall “tune”.

Steely - Emphasized upper mids around 3 to 6 kHz. Peaky, non flat high frequency response. Metallic.

Strident - See Harsh, Edgy.

Sub-Bass - The audio frequencies between about 20Hz and 80Hz.

Sweet - Typically reference to smooth comfortable high pitch sounds.

Technical Ability - A blanket term for attack transients, imaging, decay, tonality, tonal balance, timbre, temperature, and texture. At times overall frequency response (if even and correct) is considered part of technical ability.

Swagger - The ability of music to somehow find its core groove. This results from capturing and replaying the subtle nuances that make timing and pace special.

Synergy - The interaction or cooperation of two or more audio components in an audio system, which, when combined produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. Example: the synergy between a DAC and a headphone amp.

Texture - The timbre of multiple instruments playing together, though more accurately the instrument “voices” together.

Thick - Typically bass or lower midrange density.

Thin - Fundamentals are weak relative to harmonics; bass light.

Tight - Good low frequency transient response and detail.

Timbre - The tonal character of an instrument which separates it from other instruments of the same tone.

Timing - Tempo in relationships with clarity of pace.

Tin-like (Tinny) - Thin harmonically narrow, metallic, in treble region.

Tone - The sound of definite pitch.

Transient - The leading edge of a percussive sound, though the term can be applied to any wave form.

Transparent - Easy to hear into the music, detailed, clear, not muddy. Wide flat frequency response, sharp time response, very low distortion and noise. A hear through quality that is akin to clarity and reveals all aspects of detail.

Treble - The highest part of music and voice. See Highs. (Most often used when referring to the treble control on amplifiers).

Upper Midrange (Upper Mids, High Mids) - The audio frequencies between 2 kHz and 6 kHz.

Vivid - A word often used to describe clarity and intensity.

Veiled- Lack of full clarity due to noise or loss of detail from limited transparency.

Warm - Good bass, adequate low frequencies, adequate fundamentals relative to harmonics. Not thin. Also excessive bass or mid bass. Also, pleasantly spacious, with adequate reverberation at low frequencies. Also see Rich, Round. Warm highs means sweet highs.

Weighty - Good low frequency response below about 50 Hz. A sense of substance and underpinning produced by deep, controlled bass. Suggesting an object of great weight or power, like a diesel locomotive.

Width - The apparent lateral spread of a stereo image. If appropriately recorded, a reproduced image should sound no wider or narrower than how it sounded originally.

Woolly - Loose, ill-defined bass.

You see these are all the things that some people hear with cables. You are saying the differences don't exist, yet your science, your very best you can come up with science can not show these measurements. So really we are both standing our ground, because one side says cables change things, yet the other side has no way to measure if those changes actually exist or not. Now that is not very good science is it?

I'm sure if you came over for dinner and we had a few drinks we could forget this stupid debate and get to some cool music listening. In the end it actually doest matter....................only because it will never be proven one way or another in our life time, no matter how much we want it to be disclosed.

 

[colonelkernel8]

So wait, you mean 1/2 of Head-Fi are wrong. That all these people that are finding joy as just deluded and wrong? But of course because you can never hear a difference and modern science can not prove the difference, it is fraud? What about how with the very best of equipment modern science can not measure the Pace of music through an IEM. They have no way to measure Stage in an IEM. The is no way to measure Timbre of an IEM........etc etc....

You see these are all the things that some people hear with cables. You are saying the differences don't exist, yet your science, your very best you can come up with science can not show these measurements. So really we are both standing our ground, because one side says cables change things, yet the other side has no way to measure if those changes actually exist or not. Now that is not very good science is it?

I'm sure if you came over for dinner and we had a few drinks we could forget this stupid debate and get to some cool music listening. In the end it actually doest matter....................only because it will never be proven one way or another in our life time, no matter how much we want it to be disclosed.

Yes, unequivocally 1/2 of Head-Fi are wrong. It's probably more than half if we're being honest. "Pace of music" isn't a thing dude, lmao. If your cable is increasing/decreasing the tempo of the music, that's a problem! How else can "pace" be defined?

I would refuse to come over to your house honestly. You're not a person that seems capable of doing anything but annoy me and try to sell me a cable. Cables have been proven, utterly, to be completely ineffective at altering the signal in the audible spectrum, but you guys just pretend that doesn't exist because reasons I guess. I mean for you specifically that reason is MONEY, but everyone else? Delusions. I can forgive a person for their delusions, but I will treat them as delusions. You on the other hand are just another shill on the internet.

Thanks for the dictionary of words. I need to write a browser plugin that checks poster history for those terms and flags those individuals as "don't bother".

 

[castleofargh]

That all these people that are finding joy as just deluded and wrong?

I don't see how being right about something has anything to do with finding joy. Or the other way around. I can enjoy living a lie, I can be saddened after learning a certain truth.
At best, we might be able to argue that the search for truth is pleasing to some people.

Signed: Confusedcius.

 

[Redcarmoose]

I don't see how being right about something has anything to do with finding joy. Or the other way around. I can enjoy living a lie, I can be saddened after learning a certain truth.
At best, we might be able to argue that the search for truth is pleasing to some people.

Signed: Confusedcius.

Well it is just cables are my favorite thing about this hobby. So it is learning the aspects of the metallurgy and leaning how each cable interfaces with the IEM and DAP, or Dongle. Literally this is not that long ago, where I have been an audiophile since 1973, and sure I heard cable changes when I started to get to the next level around 2008. Still cables are now my most favorite part of the hobby. It is not a lie if you always hear cables in their character.