Why cables can be expensive

It is only irrational to you, I find you irrational (and BTW objectionable and so does Allan). You can challenge anything, it is just all the daft references the likes of you come up with to do with things like magic, pixy dust etc. By doing this you just show your closed mind and ignorance. You have nothing to make your point but insult and dissing. All in reality you can possibly say is that *you* cannot hear it, everything else is trouble making and bullshit.

History is full of people who had observations, ideas and opinions which the closed minded refered to as irrational, to become just accepted norm a few or many years latter. The problem with being a closed minded bigot is you end up looking stupid when and if the proof arrives.

Once again, and there is no way around it - *you* cannot prove a negative, you can only say that you have not heard it. And that can only be for two reasons either your system is incapable of showing it or you are incapable of hearing it - the rest of your nonsense is just fluff and forum grissle.

 

I am puzzled as why my experience should appear irrational to anyone. I experienced it & shared it. I do not expect to be challenged any more than I expect to be agreed with - I am not so rude as that.


Rob, as always you make your point with respect, which dignifies you. However your main point does not bear such dignity, ie to effectively place a listener on trial to prove what he has (/ not) heard. There is an implicit distrust of the listener's (defendants?) ears and or judgement, which he would be under pressure to prove.

The expectation bias stimulated by the whole situation would be so harmful to the experience of enjoying music that I don't know what I would hear or otherwise.

The arrogance of the whole debate here is the premise that I heard nothing or there must be a reason why I think I heard it....It was / is clear to me, the difference exists as I heard it. I simply don't understand why you might think I had expectation bias towards a (£10) cable of all things!!!

It makes little difference at the end of the day but I have never been to a HiFi dealer, nor have I even seen an LP12 in the flesh. I am however familiar with the associated history, and I can't help but wonder if the whole 'Sceptical Objective' agenda is simply a backlash from all that went before. Reactionary movements generally end up about as reasonable as the cause of the reaction. How can you be sure this entire philosophy is not based on expectation bias?

 

In the face of such a bitter tirade, and especially since Allen (WTF's Allen? And who gives a monkey's what he thinks of me?) doesn't like me, I will limit myself to repeating one little question.

You can hear a difference. The physics behind the systems involved are completely understood and have been for half a century. Therefore there must be a physical cause behind the "change" you hear. But you, and everybody else who claims to hear these differences, cannot even begin to explain them. So, as stated earlier we have an effect without a cause. Magic, pixy dust, witchcraft are words entirely appropriate to that situation.

OK, let's take the short cut.

You can hear these differences. Prove it. Do it blind. But no, you won't do that, will you. You cite, "stress" as areason for you possibly not being able to reliably hear any differences, or the system in use is not capable of resolving the subtle differences.

Put your money where your mouth is, Richard. But you won't.

Chris

 

No they aren't, what is understood is gross and largely irrelevant, otherwise the subjective would not be required.

There is no subject on the planet that we have approached full understanding of, and it is just arrogance to think we have. There were people like you in the middle ages as well, wouldn't they be surprised to see the current science.

 

Yes lets take a short cut - read the thread - read my experience of blind testing including cable - look at the post about the July bake-off. If you intend to be such a prat at least do the minimum of reading what has been already said.

 

No, we have a situation where people can't explain themselves. Your sneering contempt for me & others like me is astonishing.

If I lack the technical ability to explain the character of what I hear, and you represent the view that technical methods/analysis fails to explain the same character, we have an impasse. Your stance is a contemptuous dismissal of my finding, mine is that you lack the means and or understanding to satisfy your own desire to understand.

I fail to understand not only the technicalities at play, but your vitriol.

 

guys chill out.

this debate is decades old in hifi.

let people buy the cables they enjoy, using whatever rationale makes them happy.

It seems to me we don't have anyone asking '' I am thinking of spending loads on cables please explain whether this is a good idea or not ''

Instead we have people with opposite opinions arguing against each other.

There is no middle ground.

It's an old and tired subject and should be shot like a hobbled horse.

 

Hi Alan,

I will plead guilty as charged there.
Yes I do distrust the findings of many people when it comes to audio.
Bluntly, I need to hear and experience these things for myself but I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

I would stress again that this concerns someone finding product 'A' sounds different to product 'B' where no rational reason seems to exist.
If we are talking judgement in terms of a subjective preference, trust is never an issue as we all like different things. I'll not criticise anyone's personal preference.

 

When my wife used to work for market research, she often used blind taste tests for the general public. If you want people to be unable to tell the difference between butter and 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter', a simple triangle test ("here's three slices of bread and spread, two of them have butter, one has "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter". Spot the odd one out") does fine.

Food science calls these kind of tests 'snake oil', because they always push out a false negative result. ABX (more accurately 'triangle') testing in food science was discredited in the 1920s for that reason.

What possible excuse do you have for clinging to a discredited test in one field of sensory science as some kind of gold standard in another? Have you checked to see that in the process of eliminating expectation bias, you don't also throw out real results in the process.

Interestingly, Hi-Fi Plus has just published some interesting results on this. The editor did a double-blind ABX series on two versions of the same piece of classical music. His listeners couldn't spot the difference in lab conditions, even though they clearly expressed a preference and could hear differences when playing them under normal circumstances.

We need to find a better way of testing, not relying on a series of broken tests because they give us a comforting sense of 'proving' what we want them to prove.

 

So why when someone says they have a personal preference and that preference came about because they heard a difference does that person have to suffer personal abuse, because that is what has happened.

 

Sighted v Blind tests

Nothing to do with HiFi but, from the BBC website...

The only information they were given was the price of the wine - but in a number of cases, they were not told the real price. In one case, the volunteers were given two identical red wines to drink and were told that one cost much less than the other.

Most described the "higher priced" wine as much more enjoyable.

Can we honestly say that we're not influenced by our pre-conceptions when judging the quality of ANY product?

I'm not saying that cables all sound the same but how easily we can believe that one sounds better than another. Of course there are experts who will reliably identify different (and same) wines but you know what I mean.

 

i know wich wine i prefer, but that is personal to my taste, same as sound.
nando.

 

I agree with that


I think everyone should just read nando's post and shut up.

 

Well, it is true. Not one dealer would touch our inexpensive SPDIF cable, once they found out how inexpensive it was. Mind you, they all contacted us, as they heard (no pun intended) that it was a good cable. They listened, and were all on-board.

Until we sprang the price on them.

None would touch anything under $200.

You can believe it, or believe what you wish. Your choice.

So, what it the least expensive SPDIF cable in your store, hmmm?

 

"'Ere, you aren't that young man on the telly who shows those silly housewives that can't taste the difference between Whizzo butter and a dead crab, are you?"

 

quote

thanks, as for now the missis want's to watch england and feed me, and her, later what ever late night jazz,

 

They don't.
I can only speak for myself and the strongest language I've used to describe those I feel are unduly influenced by bias is that they are deluded, or deluding themselves.
I wouldn't class that as personal abuse - it describes a reaction to events or influence that might be false.

But personal insults come from all sides of the argument.

In all honesty, the best we can hope from this type of argument is that it generates tangents and other areas for discussion. This is one argument that will never be settled no matter how loud the shouting. Doesn't mean we shouldn't have these discussions though because on an individual basis people might learn something new or think about doing things differently.

 

one of the best threads ever, needs another airing !

https://www.audio-forums.com/as-rediect/showthread.php?t=22779

 

Thank you, I would like that.

If you want some dac or computer audio kit I can bring along an Apple based solution.
Might appeal as the new Mac notebooks (use as digital transport) run for about 8 hours on a charge so no SMPS connected to your system.
Lossles files running optically into one of your own dacs might be of interest to you.

 

You know perfectly well the abuse to both Alan Brown and myself came from SQ, Nando and mostly from Mescalino, you have removed a lot of it for which I thank you. All I personally have done is return insult that hasn't been addressed by the mods, I have initiated nothing. This is all explained in my posts on ad hominem, unless you deal with the initiation then it all just escalates. But Allan hasn't even responded and has remained polite and yet he is still subject to continuing abuse.

Why cant the subject be discussed and argued without insult, you have seen the results of this in the past and it threatens your forum and you lost membership and posts for a long period because of it, learn from it and don't allow the likes of Mescalino to damage the recovery of the forum.

You have been polite on the surface but you are still insulting the intelligence of the poster, which is what I have returned to you. Alan has commented on this as well.