Do cables make a difference ?

1.Do cables make a difference ? Yes but not in the way you think


2.Which cables make the most difference? See below percentages
As a percentage what difference does best cable make ?
IC's....................40%
Mains................. 10%
Speaker...............50%
Digital.................. 0%

3.Have cables ever made your system sound worse? Yes

4.Idealogically cables can't make a difference ? No


5.Have you ever tried any after market cables ? Yes and they went back after the so called "burn in" period


6.What IC cables do you use? Home Design and Made.

7. If you were to rate your system were would it fall.

High end...........X....................low fi

8. And an indication of system worth

4000

 

I'd like to ask a quick question if I may.

How do quantify the difference in percentages? Surely you need a reference point/scale to work out percentages. In other words, what is 0% and 100%?

 

Good question..........but most people I feel can tell if its a huge change 70-80% or nearly none at 0%. I'm more for gut feelings rather than empirical measurments .
Intrestingly How you rathe you system q 7 is very revealing when you look at the results in combination with a couple of the othe questions. more of which latter.

 

.Do cables make a difference ? oh yes unless your deaf

2.Which cables make the most difference? IC's/Mains/speaker
As a percentage what difference does best cable make ?
IC's....................40%
Mains.................10%
Speaker...............30%
Digital..................20%

3.Have cables ever made your system sound worse? yes

4.Idealogically cables can't make a difference ? no


5.Have you ever tried any after market cables ? Yes

6.What IC cables do you use? DIY

7. If you were to rate your system were would it fall.

High end........x........................low fi

8. And an indication of system worth

Impossible to say as most of its DIY, but demo's have proved that Id have to spend many £1000's to replace it commercially

 

I thought we were working on 100% total for question 2. If not I can say that the best cables can make as much as 80% for the speaker and I/C's.

 

1.Do cables make a difference ? Some

2.Which cables make the most difference? IC's/Mains/speaker
As a percentage what difference does best cable make ?
IC's....................+10%
Mains.................+0% NEVER HEARD A SINGLE MAINS CABLE SOUND BETTER.
Speaker...............+30%
Digital..................+5%

3.Have cables ever made your system sound worse? yes - Cable Talk 3 yuck

4.Idealogically cables can't make a difference ? no


5.Have you ever tried any after market cables ? Yes


6.What IC cables do you use? Custom made pure siver and various other shop stuff.

7. If you were to rate your system were would it fall.

High end........X........................low fi

8. And an indication of system worth

5000+..X.....2500+.......1000+......500+.......

 

That should be easy to disprove given a selection of people with full and with partial hearing and a selection of cables.

:bookworm:

 

Only if those people are able to "perceive" the difference. I'm firmly of the opinion that we don't all hear the same things. This is certainly true with sight and taste so there is no reason why hearing shouldn't be different. The way in which the brain proceeses information differs from person to person, often missing out what it considers irrelevant. As a result human perception is an unreliable way to measure anything or to form a judgement on the nature of reality.

 

1.Do cables make a difference ? yes


2.Which cables make the most difference? IC's/Mains/speaker
As a percentage what difference does best cable make ?
IC's....................+40%
Mains.................+10%
Speaker...............+50%
Digital..................not tried
i think every cable effect differ
3.Have cables ever made your system sound worse? yes

4.Idealogically cables can't make a difference ? no


5.Have you ever tried any after market cables ? Yes


6.What IC cables do you use? vdh second

7. If you were to rate your system were would it fall.

High end..........X......................low fi

8. And an indication of system worth

i think this questions can not give us good idea about cables

 

highend cables tell you difference in highend systems in long term listenning

 

So what you are saying is to only use people who can perceive a difference to determine if there is a difference or not? That my friend is called selection bias and a thoroughly circular and useless scientific test - yet the one the hifi mags are eager to use for obvious reasons . By taking a large number of listeners the differences average out - thats the point of significance testing. Taking an individual person is unreliable but conducting trials accross many people gives a level of confidence in the results if it is done properly - same as medical trials. If you take a 100 people and 20 cables in blind listening conditions and the ability to discern high end cable from control shows no significant presence then the subjectively observed hyptothesis should be rejected. Sure you might get the odd pattern but that means nothing - patterns can occur by chance. After all who measures cables when they choose them? No you listen by ear and choose what you want ... its subjective. So a subjective blind test to test that alledged subjective effect is valid.

 

Well actually alot of listening tests involve screened listeners. For example localization of sound is something people can be trained to do (many localization tests involve a training stage) and you get better at it with practice. If you just test any Tom Dick of Harry you generally get a load of nonsense as people tend to write random things down because they feel compelled to give an answer. Theres nothing wrong with cutting people out of your results as long as you have a sound reason to do it. People also get stressed more quickly when they don't know what they're doing and stress is an extremely important factor is subjective listening tests as people get to the point where they can't determine the difference between anything much after a while. If you pick a group of experienced listeners without bias (the less you reveal to them the less bias they should have) you are likely to get far more accurate results.
Its like testing which car is best, you wouldn't ask anyone off the street, you'd determine that they can drive first and probably to what ability they can drive too.

 

I think you might be surprised how many experts score worst in these tests

For instance most hifi buffs are male but most women have far more discriminatory hearing.

Picking and choosing listeners introduces selection bias especially if the methodology is "flawed" in other ways as well.

Listening to music requires no skill - driving a car does so its not the same.

The placebo effect is also important. And of particular relevence to cable purchases.

Again aclimatisation and calibration can be taken into account - something I had to do when performing listening tests for military comms systems. Its not quite analagous to car driving - the ear can become more discrimating after practice so this effect needs to be removed. It has little or nothing to to do with hifi expert status. Valid screening would be test peoples hearing and remove those people with hearing problems. Which is exactly what we did.

 

I wasn't talking about hifi buffs at all. It also depends on what you are testing, you have decide whether or not it is a skill, my example, localization is and is analagous to driving. Unless your going to survey thousands of people 3 times over etc. which fair enough is more scientific, I don't see a problem with selected subjects. I used selected listeners at uni. Interestingly a fair mix between 'pro hifi' and 'anti hifi'. Didn't seem to make much difference. Mind you the most vocal anti hifi guy uses quad IIs which I never managed to figure out

 

Tell you what would be very interesting (but quite expensive to implement). I do a bit of work with MRI scans, but don't quite have the ability to rig this.

If you were to do some functional imaging (where you look at neural activity) you could look at the difference in neural activity when trying different cables in people who perceive differences, as well as those who do not.

I doubt it would get into any journals (other than an aside in hifi+) but it may help add evidence to this continuing argument.

 

What we are testing is the assertion that high end cables make a subjective positive difference. This isnt a skill, we are testing for the existence of a subjective effect that could then later hopefully be justified on a theoretical basis once we know it exists. Some calibration and acclimitisation is necessary but thats all. By looking at ranking tests involving multiple cables and by carefully constructing the tests and the methodology I doubt you would need 1000s of listeners. Lets say 25 listeners and 10 cables. With each cable repeated ten times randomly. I bet something useful would come of that.

 

Interesting but it might well reveal more about the brain and the placebo effect than anything else

 

true, brian's placebo always stumps me.

 

I assume it can reveal dyslexia as well

 

yes but my point was that if you ask a bunch of mp3 listeners to take part in such a test I bet most of them couldn't tell the difference between tubes and transistors which is why I think you need some practice (skill) in listening to determine subtle effects.