The Cable Test - listen and decide

[Wickfut]

Astonishing comment about something you've never heard.
Lot of that about though in audio land.

I've heard enough of behringer though... I've been passed quite a few bits of theirs to play with when I was into writing music.

If you want to do a test , how about this :-

Get a CDP , record the output into a CDRW take the CDRW and then play it in the CDP and record the output ... do this 10 times with each different cable and see if there is difference.

Although the continuous ADC/DAC stages will degrade the sound , in theory (if cables do actually sound the same) the end results will turn out identical. Any differences between them will be highlighted 10 fold and will be much easier to hear and less dependant on the quality of your ADC conversion.
As an example , if cable "A" reduces the bass by .5db then by the time you have done it 10 times , the bass would be reduced by 5db and will be easy to spot. You wouldn't need to even use music , get a white noise blast for 20 seconds or so as that would be sufficiant.

ofcourse , this all sounds like amazing fun , but I'm thinking you could do it when the group of you all meet up for a fun day of cable swapsies

 

[DavidF]

I really would send you a dac, it wasn't a joke.
I though perhaps that you were analogue only for a moment there

The CD offer is not a loan - you really can keep it!
I'll burn you the files during the week and post them.

Na......

It only needs to get broke whilst its here, theres a problem.

I've played with a load of stuff over the past few years and moving stuff around inevitably incurs casualties.

Just send the discs.

:MILD:

 

[RobHolt]

Discs on the way then.

Headphone listening can be very revealing if that is of interest.
Good phones really do lay bare subtleties that even very good speakers gloss over.

 

[DavidF]

Discs on the way then.

Headphone listening can be very revealing if that is of interest.
Good phones really do lay bare subtleties that even very good speakers gloss over.

Yes, I have an old pair of seinhausers here (boiught from audio excellence , again, way back.)

I usually use the music whilst moving about the house so h/p not ideal.

Been learn Polish recently so he music's had a back seat anyway.

Looking forward to the discs.

Cheers.

 

[The Devil]

A lot of outraged sqawkings from the cable guys. A null result can't possibly be right, surely?

;-)

 

[RobHolt]

Been learn Polish recently so he music's had a back seat anyway.

Cheers.

General interest in the language or a need to use it regularly?

Lots of Polish folk living here in East London, most have superb English though and put the locals to shame.

 

[DavidF]

General interest in the language or a need to use it regularly?

The need to use it regularly.

At the factory where I work we have between 40 and 60 Poles each shift.

I am one of two Brits left, at normal operator level.

Lots of Polish folk living here in East London, most have superb English though and put the locals to shame.

Correct.

One Slavakian lady, a past colleague commented you would take her for an Englishwomen, then she speaks Polish and its obvious she is not a national.

The girl on the next machine up from me( she is really nice ), her English is almost flawless.

They have awful trouble with our tense system(though the two mentioned above seem to have cracked it). In comparison they have 7 different genders for us to sort out!

 

[RobHolt]

I've heard enough of behringer though... I've been passed quite a few bits of theirs to play with when I was into writing music.

If you want to do a test , how about this :-

Get a CDP , record the output into a CDRW take the CDRW and then play it in the CDP and record the output ... do this 10 times with each different cable and see if there is difference.

Although the continuous ADC/DAC stages will degrade the sound , in theory (if cables do actually sound the same) the end results will turn out identical. Any differences between them will be highlighted 10 fold and will be much easier to hear and less dependant on the quality of your ADC conversion.
As an example , if cable "A" reduces the bass by .5db then by the time you have done it 10 times , the bass would be reduced by 5db and will be easy to spot. You wouldn't need to even use music , get a white noise blast for 20 seconds or so as that would be sufficiant.

ofcourse , this all sounds like amazing fun , but I'm thinking you could do it when the group of you all meet up for a fun day of cable swapsies

I'm now certain you haven't read this thread.
I've not said that all cables are 100% identical - of course there can minute differences as for starters, the LCR is a little different between even similar cables.
Take a miniscule difference and magnify it X10 and it means nothing at all here - you don't loop the signal X10 through a home system. In fact, if you have to apply so much magnification it rather reinforces the argument that cable differences are either inaudible or of no significance.
Still if you fancy trying it, go for it.

Your experience of Behringer is all fine and dandy and would be relevant (thought still quite wrong IMO) were we using a normal DEQ. Your argument is rather like saying that because Meridian use a philips chipset their machines will all sound the same as some cheap philips CD player - perhaps you are?

Anything but accept that perhaps the result is right.

 

[Wickfut]

I'm now certain you haven't read this thread.
I've not said that all cables are 100% identical - of course there can minute differences as for starters, the LCR is a little different between even similar cables.
Take a miniscule difference and magnify it X10 and it means nothing at all here - you don't loop the signal X10 through a home system. In fact, if you have to apply so much magnification it rather reinforces the argument that cable differences are either inaudible or of no significance.
Still if you fancy trying it, go for it.

Taken out of context , I meant if you want to use the behringer as your source of ADC then you'll probably need to do more to make it stand out.

Your experience of Behringer is all fine and dandy and would be relevant (thought still quite wrong IMO) were we using a normal DEQ.

The behringer is poor quality full stop. It's poor as an EQ , it's poor as a DAC and it's poor as an ADC. I guess you also believe the sony playstation is a reference standard cd player too ?
The people who did strangely find a use for the thing, bypassed the analogue ins/outs and kept everything in the digital domain because they knew the analogue part of the unit was shit. But here you are with a new power supply on it, claiming that an old tech, poor quality EQ is now reference quality because it fits in with your skewed test results.

How did you get your audio into the DEQ by the way ? it has jack sockets on it and I'm assuming your cables are phonos. Please say you modded the DEQ to put decent phonos on it and not threw a few £1 phono to jack adapters, please..

Your previous point about comparing the behringer to the lavry, come on , now you are taking the piss. Playing audio on the behringer is not using its ADC converters , it's using its DAC... and comparing a top grade ADA used studios for monitoring and mastering to a toy EQ box is laughable and says alot about your standards of reference.

Your argument is rather like saying that because Meridian use a philips chipset their machines will all sound the same as some cheap philips CD player - perhaps you are?

and your argument is like saying that there are no differences between classes of CD players because your tape recording made on your amstrad beat box doesn't show it.

Anything but accept that perhaps the result is right.

I would be happy to accept the results are right , when they are done properly without using toys as reference.

 

[The Devil]

Instead of moaning on and on, in a mildly inflammatory manner, about the (rationally expected) null results from a cable comparison like this one, it might be more constructive if the cable <ahem> "enthusiasts" produced evidence of their own that significant cable differences exist.

But they won't, because the cable belief is almost exactly like a religion, and you just can't use reason against the religious, because they know they are right. Their ears tell them so, haha.

 

[RobHolt]

The behringer is poor quality full stop. It's poor as an EQ , it's poor as a DAC and it's poor as an ADC. I guess you also believe the sony playstation is a reference standard cd player too ?
The people who did strangely find a use for the thing, bypassed the analogue ins/outs and kept everything in the digital domain because they knew the analogue part of the unit was shit.

Well, I do seem to have hit a nerve!

You still cannot bloody read, so for the last time:
What bit of "all of the analogue input/output circuits are disabled and the signal is passed to/from the ADC/DAC via transformers" - do you not understand?
I can do bold and bright colours if you prefer.

Slagging something you've never set ears on is by anyone's reckoning rather stupid.

If you are genuinely interested in opinion on the unit, I can point you at the download comparison threads out there on the net where the unit has been used as ADC - with the dozens of favorable comments as to the quality. Not to mention a few press reviews.
Oddly the opinion of the many if rather stacked against the one.

But carry on wriggling/digging.

 

[RobHolt]

Instead of moaning on and on, in a mildly inflammatory manner, about the (rationally expected) null results from a cable comparison like this one, it might be more constructive if the cable <ahem> "enthusiasts" produced evidence of their own that significant cable differences exist.

But they won't, because the cable belief is almost exactly like a religion, and you just can't use reason against the religious, because they know they are right. Their ears tell them so, haha.

It was never going to be easy and a couple of people warned me to expect incoming when the shit hit the fan, which is fine but I didn't expect to be fending off daft comments from people who've never heard the equipment or cannot (perhaps will not) read.

Still it livens up the place which is no bad thing
Actually its a very good thing but keep it to yourself

 

[DavidF]

Rob, to be fair, I don't really think any "shit" has hit any "fan".

The results of your test were pretty predictable to start with.

It just so happns I am the only one daft enough to try to defend the hobby. Most are, rather more sensibly, keeping quiet, probably listening to their kit!

Anyway, looking forward to gettiing your discs .

 

[muz640]

I think it was a good little experiment Rob did, and Rob should be applauded.

I dont think all cables do sound the same, some definitely alter the sound, its the magnitude of the difference, and if that difference can be heard reliably without any other stimulus coming into play.

I dont think id notice if someone changed the interconnect between the CD player and my preamp and didnt tell me, maybe id notice over time that something was different (although im not so sure!).

But if id changed the interconnect between the CD player and preamp the difference would noticeable strait away, just because id knew id changed it and was expecting the sound to change.

 

[Dev]

It just so happns I am the only one daft enough to try to defend the hobby. Most are, rather more sensibly, keeping quiet, probably listening to their kit!

I was one of those trying to keep quiet, but a greater number of participations from "defenders" could have helped to settle the argument (if that is possible). Should anyone not participating be able to pass judgement here? After all the believers often say that sceptics are dismissing without trying and here you are doing the same.

I suspect there is more "can't hear, won't hear" than anything
else. Nothing new there thoiugh. Dev, I know your approach to it so your note is little surprise either.

Actually I believe that cables can make a difference. Pete will tell you that I tried his cables and told him what I thought of them. I just go a bit further to say that if there is a difference there must be a reason for it, be it LCR, or susceptibility to noise etc. I'd also say the differences are often too subtle to argue about. Only on one occasion did I hear a "day & night" type difference, when a power cable made an amp sound too bright to listen to. I have no idea why.

 

[Dev]

I think it was a good little experiment Rob did, and Rob should be applauded.

Agreed, well done Rob.

I dont think all cables do sound the same, some definitely alter the sound, its the magnitude of the difference, and if that difference can be heard reliably without any other stimulus coming into play.

I dont think id notice if someone changed the interconnect between the CD player and my preamp and didnt tell me, maybe id notice over time that something was different (although im not so sure!).

But if id changed the interconnect between the CD player and preamp the difference would noticeable strait away, just because id knew id changed it and was expecting the sound to change.

Can't argue with that.

 

[muz640]

I think Rob should test these next.

They have an advert in Hifi World, it will be interesting to see if they do a test on them.

 

[DavidF]

"Actually I believe that cables can make a difference. Pete will tell you that I tried his cables and told him what I thought of them. I just go a bit further to say that if there is a difference there must be a reason for it, be it LCR, or susceptibility to noise etc. I'd also say the differences are often too subtle to argue about. Only on one occasion did I hear a "day & night" type difference, when a power cable made an amp sound too bright to listen to. I have no idea why"


I mostly agree!

I've never made any arguement but that cables make a subtle but definite difference.

It just depends on what that subtle difference makes to you! (as someone correctly commented yesterday)

Yes, its great that Rob went to the effort to conduct this experiment but not so great if,

1) we use it to discouraage people from experimenting with cables (or even other bits).

2) we forget that the test numbers were so low as to render results less than meaningful.

I think Rob should test these next.


They have an advert in Hifi World, it will be interesting to see if they do a test on them.

There you go Rob, mate.

Your challenge for next week end.

 

[Dev]

2) we forget that the test numbers were so low as to render results less than meaningful.

The irony! .

 

[DavidF]

I was one of those trying to keep quiet, but a greater number of participations from "defenders" could have helped to settle the argument (if that is possible). Should anyone not participating be able to pass judgement here?
After all the believers often say that sceptics are dismissing without trying and here you are doing the same.
.

Dev, I have tried more than enough cables to settle the arguement for myself.

Your attack is unfounded unfortunately.