Do you belive it is possible for you to 'imagine' sonic differences?

And if I did take up your offer and heard a difference, how would we know if I had heard a real difference or just imagined it?

I use VdH 102 interconnect. My reasons for doing so are probably largely psychological. I used to think it sounded very different from a freebie. After being convinced that cable differences probably did not exist, I listened again and found that it didn't sound different at all. Or at least, no way as different as I had previously thought.

The question is not 'do cables make a difference' because we know that they do. The question is 'do they make real or imaginary differences'? And how might we best find this out?

 

We can now all see you for what you are .......all mouth and no trousers in sight.

I have thourghly debagged you ..........

I have offered to send you a cable that many others have heard, and you turn it down. So what are we to think .....

 

Debagged, indeed! zanash, this is a hi-fi forum read by a handful of people. Also, I am hardly being 'mouthy' nor am I not wearing trousers.

I have listened to several different cables. I used to think they made differences, sometimes quite large differences. Now I do not. I accept that cables do make a difference. We know that they do for many.

My point is that, in the absense of any proof from double blind tests, there is a possibility that the differences are imagined and not real. Do you accept this or do you think that the differences you hear must be real and cannot be imagined?

Do you think there is a way to find out if the differences are real or do you think it is something we cannot prove?

 

I don't know about pointless Andy, it's certainly one-sided. Not really surprising considering the question. I.e. of course it's possible to imagine sonic differences, for anyone.

 

Exactly Dev, hence my idea of it being pointless. I fail to see it has any relevance to a discusion of cable merits.

 

Now, the obvious question, why isn't the response unanimous?

 

some people have no imagination?

 

Well, orthodox 'science' as it stands today would have us believe that many differences claimed to be audible are not. At least the vast majority of voters here would accept the possibily that the differences could be imagined, which is what 'science' infers.

Whilst it may be misplaced enthusiasm, it is not unknown for claims to be made for cables etc. along the lines of 'a total transformation of the sound', couldn't believe what I was hearing', 'one of the biggest improvements I've heard'.

A poor analogy but would it be possible to imagine such gross differences between, say, two identical paintings? Visually, I don't think we would be able to fool ourselves to that extent. Of course, it is also possible that cable believers are not fooling themselves - or, in other words, science is wrong - but how can we find out?

 

At a HiFi show I attended a while ago, a company was carrying out a demo of their speaker cables against much more expensive cables from another manufacturer.

I thought I noticed an improvement as we moved from the cheapest to the next step up cable and there were others who thought that there was an improvement with every swap and this particular company's cable was consistantly better than the competition costing 3-4 times the price.

I thought perhaps the "improvements" were due to me getting more familiar with the music, which I had never heard before. So I asked the organiser to revert back to cheaper cables and he did rather reluctantly, and although one chap in the room claimed the sould quality had deteriorated, I wasn't able to detect it.

So, did I imagine the first improvement or the last non-improvement?

 

strangely, the strongest 'finding' from the wigwam cable test was preference for the second cable, no matter what that cable was.

this leads me to think that any A/B comparisons should be mindful of that, which may be down the explanation you offer.