Cable Happy.

Well my question, though not dealing with the undead, was scientifically based-why wont you answer it?

 

Yes and I have said if evidence becomes available - either theoretical or though blind testing then science will accept the claims of the cable proponents. Currently there is none and it in fact contradicts many known laws of physics. Your rather poor excuse is that if you try to apply science then it disappears and a misapplied anecdote about switches and light bulbs. Consequently the onus is upon the cable crowd to prove their claims (and claim their $1M from randi). None have produced the slightest evidence so far not even the cable companies.

You claimed science had failed by that example - it has not, it is science in action. No-one doubts memories exist - we just dont know how to explain them fully. However their is no evidence for the cable claims. An observable but no explanantion on the one hand and on the other ... no observable therefore no requirement for an explanation. Once it is produced then its presence can be rigorously tested for and if it is found the theoretical framework should be further developed to encompass the findings. You try to exempt cables from this process by essentially saying it is faith that disappears under testing. The truth is simple. If you can hear it and it exists then you will be able to construct a listening test with repeatable results to show that this is the case, from the very fact that a difference can be heard in the first place. You just make the test exactly like the conditions in which you claim to have heard the difference, and repeat for a large number of listeners. Even if some hear and some don't it will still show up in a large enough sample.

The "matrix of information" etc etc you refer to is irrelevant to the purpose of the listening test - which merely requires you to demonstrate an ability to identify and discriminate and is not dependent on the mechanism only the results.

I claim it doesnt exist as it doesnt fit into and contradicts theory, there is no experimental evidence and listening tests reveal no ability to discern between cables. Not just because it cant be measured.

This may change of course at some point but at this present time there is no evidence at all. I would also suggest that even if it was found to exist the effect is so small it would inevitably be money wasted on more expensive "better" cable when you could get a thousand times the improvement elsewhere by spending the money on system components or room treatments.

Actually If you different LCR cables between cartridge and phono stage it is trivial to measure the effect on the frequency response... and they back up the subjective listening results and also the underlying theory. Thats science!

Give me time! For interconnects I spent about £50 each for 1-3m stereo balanced and unbalanced cables using £4m shielded low-cap cable. The majority in each instance was spent on high quality neutrik connectors. Speaker cables were supplied with the active setup.

 

I use similar sensibly priced VanDamme balanced lo-cap cable.
Good choice lo-cap, you don't want a dull sound due to hf roll off from hi cap cables.

 

A couple of brilliant posts there brizonbiovizor. Too much logic for a few people I think

 

brizonbiovizor, why do you not use bell wire as your IC? Whilst your cabling is cheap, is it a step up from the free wire you are handed with basic equipment. £ 50 each, isnt the cheapest you can purchase surely? Is it the screening you are paying for? and if so, is this not similar to employing a more expensive cable that makes ficticious claims about sound? just curious. JCL...what is your slant on this? Might be useful to add your thoughts, rather than simply lavish praise upon briz at the end of a post. Is there something you wish to add, or is your tongue too firmly up his A****? Others, who have a different POV from Briz have posted sensibly, whilst you have just jumped in with a winking smiley face. Who says its too much logic? Im taking on board Brizs views and trying to make my mind up based on the evidence that I have come across personally. Logic means reasonong correctly. Whilst I do think briz believes what he says, Im not convinced that he is necessarily correct in his reasoning. To state that there is no difference in wires is a contradiction should he have more expensive wires than is absolutely necessary and have , for example- different wires. They would all be the same, and of the cheapest variety. unless there was need for a specific requirement, such as visual pleasure of the outer sheathing. Are your wires all the same Briz, and why did you choose the ones you have? I think we would all like to know your reasons. Would you be happy with red and white freebies? IE if I offered you a few pairs of red and white as a swap for your current wires, would you take me up on the offer?

 

The point here is that you sat with the seller and saw which cables you were listening to. You had been told which ones would do what. You heard what he wanted you to hear - or thought you did anyway. The easy way to do this is blind. Then you will know if you really did hear a difference or not. To date, no one has. Famously, Russ Andrews sales manager invited a group of forumites to their offices a few years ago to demonstrate the differences Kimber silver cables made. They were jaw dropping alledgedly. Under controlled conditions in his own listening room with his setup, he spectacularly failed to identify the cables. He was as shocked as no doubt you would be. This was an example of science at work. Having Pete sitting with you tapping his foot sadly is not.

 

£4 a metre is pretty cheap! I wanted low cap as that is desirable - particularly between cartridge and phono stage and I wanted good shielding. 80% of the cost went on high quality connectors - which make a difference for sound well understood engineering reasons. I consider that reasonable and the same cable is used throughout (the cable is also quad core so that it can be used for balanced operation which is why it is more expensive than bell wire). No doubt bell wire would have sounded almost identical bar the higher capacitance effects and no shielding but I would have saved just a few pounds anyway. As opposed to pay £1K per metre or more for top nordost. Big difference.

As my system is balanced I fear your red and white pair will not help me much!

If cables make such a jaw dropping difference as hifi+claim this month they why arent the manufacturers falling over themselves to produce test results and live demonstrations at shows to shift more product? Simple - because there is nothing to show.

 

Oh dear, we seem to lurch to both extremes and quote science and logic like we are the representatives of all science or hearing experiences. Science is not quite the wonderful logical world you make it out to be and some theories/ideas die out when the proposers die (literally).

Dealing with your comments:

Cables either make a difference or they don't. That wont change - only our perception of it will change as new theories or new test results come to light.

Agreed and I, and others, believe that there are differences.


Currently there is no evidence whatsoever to support the claim that it exists other than anecdotal claims by audiphools,

Yes there is. There is a large body of people who have clearly stated that they can hear differences. Calling people names does not really help your argument.


all of which evaporates under scientific scrutiny

By using a test that actually destroys they differences. If you know about quantum mechanics then you will know by doing an observation you can cause a change in the state of an object. I am not saying cable differences are quantum mechanical in nature just using it as an example.

leaving only excuses by which they try to exempt their religion from the tests that work in every other instance in the physical world.

No they don't. There are very few AB (ABX) tests showing statistically significant differences in the sound quality of amplifiers yet people are more prepared to accept they sound different. I am questioning the use of this test in these circumstances.

This they have in common with believers in the supernatural, homeopathy and the tooth fairy. All of these being imaginary as well...

Oh dear back to name calling again.

A lot of wooly thinking on this thread

Agreed from both sides

- our ears are measurement devices - rather undiscerning except in a narrow range of frequencies but with a wide dynamic range. geared towards survival and communication not cable discrimination.


No. The 'system' is a crude(ish) measuring device (ear) and an enormously complex massively parallel processing unit (the brain). The perceptions of that system are complex and are being better understood but only slowly. For example, the eye is a crude device but our visual system (including the brain) is still not fully understood but provides an enormous amount of information.

My worry here is that there are a lot of closed minds.

The simple "we understand it all so no need to do any more work you are imagining it and are phools" is a real dead end. Also science advances by refining observations and if necessary refining the theories. That does not make the 'old science' wrong. Newtonian mechanics is not wrong because of Einstein. The idea of 'science has been proved wrong in the past and let's abandon it' is also wrong. Although I understand why people say that when they get the 'you are a phool' because my simple view of science says you are wrong.

A pity because there was some interesting work from Hawksford and some others on transmission theory and the recent idea of digitising the input to a cable and comparing it to the output and looking for differences seems to have disappeared. Maybe they are working on it quietly.

 

"The point here is that you sat with the seller "


.....yes, pete with his pressure selling....





we all know about that?!?!


(edit this absolutely NOT the case to be clear)


"Having Pete sitting with you tapping his foot sadly is not"


...as if thats goign to make any odds





a few quite good points in there, Mike unfortunately rather over shadowed by the less than good ones.

Like Ives said a few times now it would have suited me far better for the cables NOT to have worked.

 

David,

You really don't seem to appreciate just how imaginative your mind can be under those circumstances. Nor did the Russ Andrews sales manager - but at least he had the courage to put his faith to the test and find out the truth for himself. Think. That could save you a fortune.

 

"Yes there is. There is a large body of people who have clearly stated that they can hear differences. Calling people names does not really help your argument. "

There is also a large body of people that believes in Santa Claus and psychic surgery. Irrelevant. Only the evidence matters.

"By using a test that actually destroys they differences. If you know about quantum mechanics then you will know by doing an observation you can cause a change in the state of an object. I am not saying cable differences are quantum mechanical in nature just using it as an example. "

Yes I know a little about QM as it happens. I have a PhD in theoretical physics and over 15 years working in research and testing. You are incorrect. Quantum states occur as a probabilistic distribution - a waveform that is collapsed to an observable by a measurement. Said measurement is interaction with any other particle or wave. This occurs at the quantum level and has nothing to do with macro level phenomena. This is just misappropriation of a piece of science applied incorrectly and in a misleading way in an attempt to justify a piece of hocus pocus. In the same way high brow religious mags also attempt to use QM to talk about faith. Hearing is also a test so if you claim to hear a difference then by definition you have found a test that does not destroy the phenomena. If you then repeat under blind conditions for multiple listeners and the effect vanishes it is because it is in your imagination. The effect of the "blind" aspect being to remove the effects of bias or belief. Obviously you will object to that part and concoct a mistaken self rationalization that testing destroys the effect as testing has actually just proved you are incorrect and you are unable to accept the facts.

"No they don't. There are very few AB (ABX) tests showing statistically significant differences in the sound quality of amplifiers yet people are more prepared to accept they sound different. I am questioning the use of this test in these circumstances."

Many amplifiers do sound similiar - how ever there are measurable differences and where sound differences occur they can be related back to these differences. Big difference.

"Oh dear back to name calling again."

I didn't call anyone any names - I just stated a list of imaginary things.

"No. The 'system' is a crude(ish) measuring device (ear) and an enormously complex massively parallel processing unit (the brain). The perceptions of that system are complex and are being better understood but only slowly. For example, the eye is a crude device but our visual system (including the brain) is still not fully understood but provides an enormous amount of information."

Yes the brains processing is complex but that also is geared towards survival and communication. A lot of what you perceive with your senses is filled in and isn't actually there. Most of what you see and hear is made up by the brain to cover the visual and aural systems limitations and to a large part the interpolation is dictated by prior belief or experience. A point you have failed to appreciate and which if you consider closely will lead to an understanding of why it is exactly that we must treat sense based beliefs with a great deal of caution. I have spent a great deal of time doing research in speech recognition, neural networks and listening test assessments. I am also familiar with kuhn popper feyerahband (sic) et al. I know how science works in practice and in theory.

Noone said we understand everything. You have no evidence - until you do there is nothing for science to answer and no need to refine. Thats the point so get some evidence rather than cables are exempt from the tests that apply to everything else just because you dont like the results of those tests.

I refer you to the results of cable comparator tests as well using a subtraction amplifier - again strong objective evidence no difference exists.

 

You seem sadly rather confused.
So you need quad core for balanced then? erm no but it does offer better RF rejection than 2 core.
You have just acknowledged that bell wire would indeed sound different due to capacitance effects and then moved on to weasel your position with 'jawdroppingly different', swinging back to there are no provable differences.
Confused dot f****g com.
Just taking one of the tests on PACX throws up how in a very short time you can lose the plot when AB'ing, and no doubt would show some very confusing results when say ABing two very good preamp/amps,
probably why extended listening /home trials are necessary/recommended.

 

Come on guys, some of you are trying to put audio dealers out of business...

Cables are the last thing that dealers can make big bucks on - over 50% in many cases and stressing that expensive cables don't work may contribute to even more dealers going under and then where will you buy your gear from? :JOEL:

I think that the likes of Van Damme and Shark cables can be amazing value for money, especially if you can solder carefully yourself. Remember that Balanced cables have far less of a differences than single ended ones with phono plugs for perfectly measurable reasons.

Take a cable that retails in a HiFi shop for £100. The dealer buys it for £40, the manufacturer makes it for less than a tenner I suspect, the packaging probably costing as much as the completed cable.

Going the other way, I rather like the clear jacket single ended silver plated screened wire from Maplin, which sells for around a fiver per metre. Add some Neutric style plugs and some silver solder and the price is about fifteen - twenty quid approx. A HiFi cable manufacturer retailing a made up version would put a retail price on this as £150 - £200 approx.

Sorry to pour cold water on this thread. I think at the top of the Top End that silly priced wires do make a difference (and heard it many times too), but this could be as much incompetent electronics design as actual differences in the wires or increased resolution on the equipment..

P.S. I'd always recommend a home trial of a couple of days or so before you buy on any cable over £100 rrp. If you have a good relationship with your dealer then this will never be a problem I suspect. That way, an initial emotional response will hopefully be tempered to a more realistic conclusion.

 

No it isnt. RF rejection can be measured don't you think?

The effect of capacitance between cartridge (as a passive device) and the phono preamp input is well understood and in accordance with scientific principles. it has nothing to do with the other cable claims being presented here.

The confusion here is yours.

DSJR is right - most dealers make most of their margin from cables - think about that You make a good point - there could be effects due to inadequate component design - especially earthing.

 

Cooky,

BBV is right here. What I have been saying is that electrically identical cables sound identical, electrically differing ones might, under certain circumstances, sound slightly different. There is therefore no justification for some of the outlandish claims we see here and elsewhere.

 

If even SM and BBV are beating the same drum surely that must be a strong argument even by itself

 

bottleneck backs slowly away towards the door...

 

whoooooooo!

Thats a bit patronising!





Yes I do actually.

I am very aware of the variations/ vagarieties of listening perception + moods etc.






FWIW Pete and I are quite happy to tell each other when stuff DOESN'T work so well ........a two way process thats (IMO) very valuable.

 

SO IN SOME INSTANCES (and for good scientific reasons) cables can sound different, stop making absolutist statements saying they can't.
No one here has claimed jawdropping differences, SM's point about the powers of suggestion is valid but that applies to all auditioning not just cables.