Yes they do. I’m not here to advocate for any particular brand but I’ve heard a lot and they do matter. High Fidelity reveal cables, Kubala Sosna Elation and Clarity Cable Natural. I’m having a listening session where all of them is doing a great job. I’ve had cables that were cheaper in my system but a nicely priced cable that matches your system is a must. I’m not here to argue what I’m not hearing because I have a pretty good ear. I’m enjoying these three brands today and each is presenting the music differently but very nicely. Those who say cables don’t matter. Get your ears checked. I have a system that’s worth about 30 to 35k retail. Now all of these brands are above 1k and up but they really are performing! What are your thoughts.
Yes, yes, it so often comes back to that. The cables don't make a difference in your system because you can't afford an expensive system like mine!Honestly, isn't it always that argument or "your ears just aren't cultured enough" .
I go back to the old Gold Ends cables in about 1970. The deal was that low capacitance between the preamp and power amp was the big deal. I've never heard any difference at any time in reasonably constructed cables. Now it's fine if you want to spend your money that way. Please though, none of the above arguments that are basically a put down of those that aren't capable of hearing the difference either because of poverty or lack of sophistication. An active imagination is a good thing. Self delusion, not so much.
elizabeth, This may come as a shock, but what is "drivel" to you is not drivel to other people. Other people are not you, they have other interests and experience you may not have. You might want to consider that when asking to have "binned" a thread you personally don’t care for ;-) Which leads to the question of why you participate so much in a thread you dislike so much?
Maybe it will also come as a shock that likely no one comes to a thread like this expecting the issue to be "settled" by this discussion. Why enter with such an unrealistic expectation?
Another likely fact: the audience for a thread is usually far larger than the number of people posting in the thread. Not everyone may have read every other thread about the cable controversy, and may be finding newly stated points of view to think about.
As far as wasting people’s time, you seem to be projecting your own boredom and lack of interest in this subject to others. You may as well be entering a discussion board about a sport you don’t follow to declare to everyone else "you are wasting your time discussing stuff that’s not interesting or changing anyone’s mind." I mean, it’s the weirdest thing to enter a subject that clearly interests other people to declare their own time has been wasted reading it.
It’s interesting for many people to see a controversial subject debated, and to consider the merits of the arguments for each side. Someone may find his own position merited in the discussion, or may find "the other side" has actually made some decent points to consider. (And a number of people have stated they have enjoyed reading many of the posts in this thread).
Some people may not have come to a firm conclusion on this subject, and not everyone is as close minded to not be moved at all by reasoned argument and/or evidence.
Even you seemed to have started in this thread on a firmer position that cables make a difference, earlier stating:
elizabeth: I am totally in the audio cables can make a difference camp,
But now your posts have softened that position to:
elizabeth: The title of this thread is:" DO CABLES REALLY MATTER? " and I am saying Maybe,
So it seems odd that you castigate the idea of this thread as having no effect on anyone’s position, when your very own statements on cable differences have become more equivocal. Progress has been made ;-)
Quite so. The ear is rather insensitive to absolute level. But the ear/brain system is much more adept at detecting relative differences in level. That’s why the value of quick-switching is not nearly as great as prof’s argument suggests.
Cleeds, I’m not following your point there. The above seems a non-sequitur.
Quick switching is useful for detecting relative differences. That’s why it would be useful for detecting the subtle relative difference in volume that I described. So how does it follow that "the value of quick-switching is not nearly as great as prof’s argument suggests." ?
I have been arguing that the more subtle the sonic difference between A and B, the more value quick-switching has for detecting those differences. (Remembering that as I said, quick switching is not necessarily confined to short bits of sound, but rather the ability to switch quickly from one source to the other).
How exactly are you suggesting my argument is incorrect?
... if you listened to a song on my system at 70dB sound level, left for a
week then returned to listen again, you would not be able to tell if I'd
raised the volume by a couple db. That difference is far too small to
keep distinct in your memory.
Quite so. The ear is rather insensitive to absolute level. But the ear/brain system is much more adept at detecting relative differences in level. That's why the value of quick-switching is not nearly as great as prof's argument suggests.
roberjerman @ ron1319: I’d bet that if you repeated your tests again the next day or next week you’d get different results! Human memory of sonic "differences" is very fallible and prone to error! Making comparative testing difficult and frustrating!
>>>>I trust you’re speaking for yourself as my audio memory is perfectly fine. Sorry to hear of your difficulty and frustration. Maybe you need to eat more fish. 🐟 besides, as I’ve oft commented things change from hour to hour, day to day, week to week for a lot of reasons so of course it would make sense that things might sound quite different from time to time. The difficulty is correlating sound with the variables, as always. Nobody promised you a rose garden. 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 If it was easy everyone would have a great sounding system.
So how is it that we can recognize voices that we haven’t heard for a
while, say even decades....and even on lowest common denominator
transducers like telephones, and in noisy environments where voice
articulation is several notches below ideal.
How is the answer not obvious?
The differences between voices are very large in terms of timbre, harmonic content, pitch, vocal characteristics, etc. We certainly can, obviously, remember gross audible differences as between voices.And those differences are large enough to recognize through lower fidelity transmission.
But the more subtle a sonic difference, the harder it is to remember, which is why fast switching becomes ever more important.
If we talked for a while, you would likely recognize my voice if I called you a week later.
But if you listened to a song on my system at 70dB sound level, left for a week then returned to listen again, you would not be able to tell if I'd raised the volume by a couple db. That difference is far too small to keep distinct in your memory. You could have spent an entire week listening to the song at my place, but if you went a week between each "trial" to discern a couple dB level difference, we can expect you still wouldn't reliably identify the difference.
But you likely WOULD reliably identify that subtle difference if you could quickly switch back and forth between one sound file at 70 dB and the same one tweaked to 72 dB.
So if the differences are LARGE (especially multivariate), we can remember differences for longer. The more subtle the difference, the harder time retaining them in our memory. But...isn't that obvious?
So here is a thought, consider for moment that The Most Esteemed Mr Kait
is absolutely correct, and that there is something fundamentally wrong
about testing in the double bind manner. 'Cause, reality, you know, that
thingee that science is trying to map, is voicing, nay shouting, a much
different tune.
And everyone at your local Psychic Fair, or alternative healing convention, or anyone peddling pseudo-science, says the same thing. Congratulations on the company you are keeping ;-)
So how is it that we can recognize voices that we haven’t heard for a while, say even decades....and even on lowest common denominator transducers like telephones, and in noisy environments where voice articulation is several notches below ideal.
And the reality is we do this all the time without thinking of how great our hearing is and how well our auditory memory works. Yet this phenomenon, supported by an n of literally billions, is oft very conveniently forgotten when one takes a particular side discussing double bind tests.
So here is a thought, consider for moment that The Most Esteemed Mr Kait is absolutely correct, and that there is something fundamentally wrong about testing in the double bind manner. 'Cause, reality, you know, that thingee that science is trying to map, is voicing, nay shouting, a much different tune.
@ ron1319: I'd bet that if you repeated your tests again the next day or next week you'd get different results! Human memory of sonic "differences" is very fallible and prone to error! Making comparative testing difficult and frustrating!
That’s an excellent point that most people who aren’t intimately familiar with all the details of specific types of cables or any audio product, it’s all too esoteric for the average person, would be influenced one way or the other even if the test was SIGHTED. Even hardened audiophiles oft don’t keep up with very much of the newer developments in cables, especially HDMI, Ethernet cables, power cords, etc., as we have seen, no pun intended.
So I did my experiment today. It wasn't scientific, it wasn't intended to be rigorous, and it wasn't controlled. However, the results were not at all what I was expecting. I borrowed several cables from The Cable Company. For the sake of this experiment I ignored the XLR cables because it was too many options for one day. I borrowed an Audioquest Coffee USB cable, a DH Labs silversonic USB cable and Furutech GT-2 USB cable. I also have a free printer cable that I had been using. The other cables of interest were the Kimber Cable 12TC bi-wire cables which we compared to my Audioquest Rocket 33 bi-wire cables. I have a PC -> USB -> PS Audio Stellar Gain Cell DAC -> Mark Levinson 333 dual mono amp -> B&W Nautilus 801 speakers. My XLR cables are Audioquest Mackenzie and run from the DAC to the amp. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, I went to engineering school. Then I was an engineer in motherboard design/customer platform enabling for seven years. I understand PCB design and a fair amount of electronics, but I am not really a signals guy. My engineering knowledge would have told all of us that a USB cable was transmitting a digital signal and the free printer cable would sound as the ~$350 Audioquest cable. For this "experiment" I enlisted the help of a friend. She is not an audiophile. She has only ever listened to my stereo once. She generally watches television and listens to music on her Macbook with no speakers or headphones. Sometimes she listens to music with the speaker in her iPhone. She does not have a stereo. I'm not even sure if she owns a pair of headphones. The only thing I did to prepare her for this test was I switched the polarity of one speaker to show her what a major difference would be. She accurately described what happened when the speakers were out of phase in non-audiophile terms. She said that it sounded like everything that had depth seemed like it collapsed and that she couldn't tell where things were coming from. So she passed round one and got an idea of what a major difference in sound would be like. That's about as far as I expected her to be able to differentiate between differences. We used Erykah Badu "Next Lifetime" and Nils Lofgren "Keith Don't Go" for the test. We played the first 1:05 of Next Lifetime and only the first 37 seconds of Keith Don't Go. Both streaming from TIDAL. I started off switching between USB cables and asking for her to give feedback on them. It was amazing that she consistently identified every single change as better or worse and it corresponded to the price of the cable. The only exception is the DH Labs cable which is too bright and airy in my system and she didn't like it. I don't, either. To be sure, I played just Next Lifetime four times in a row with the following cable pattern A, A, B, A where A was the Audioquest and B was the printer cable. She successfully identified that the first one and the last one both sounded really good, she wasn't as sure about the second one, but that the third one was definitely not as good. I don't remember exactly what words she used to describe it, but essentially that the bass wasn't as good and the singer didn't sound as real. Then we took a break for a while and came back to see if she could hear a difference between speaker wires. Now the beauty is that she has absolutely no idea what Audioquest Rocket 33 or Kimber 12TC wires are and especially has no idea what connectors look like or what the difference between spades and banana plugs are. So it was blind to her because she has no idea what she was listening to. I literally said nothing during the test. I just told her that she would listen to both samples with one set of speaker cables and then listen to both with the other set. The switch was from the AQ Rocket 33 cables that she had been listening to with the USB cable testing to the Kimber 12TC. I expected her to look at me and tell me she couldn't hear any difference. She said that the biggest difference was in the clarity of the bass, but that the guitar sounded sweeter and more realistic with the Kimber cables and that they were definitely the better cable. No hesitation, no doubt. She was sure. I think the fact that she could not only hear a difference but describe it and make a quality judgement says a lot about the fact that "cables do matter." This wasn't intended to be scientific proof. But a girl who listens to music on her phone nailed it for both USB cables and speaker cables. There aren't a lot of you on Audiogon, but if you're in the "coat hanger sounds as good as $1000 audiophile cable" camp.. doesn't that at least make you wonder if you're right?
... anywhere the sight, or awareness of the product might cause a response
separate from the actual use of the product, blind testing would have
value.
Blind testing might have value in that instance, yes. But I wouldn't be certain that it would have value. That would hinge a lot on the details of the test itself. Conducting a scientifically valid double-blind listening test is not as easy as some here seem to think.
Look at a
certain one man company which stuck a Home Depot extension cord inside a
garden hose. then charged $1,500 or more for it. Folks LOVED it,
endless rave reviews, until someone cut one open. LOL(people 'forgave'
him because he was such an honest Christian?
That sounds like urban legend, much like your claim that Infinity's attorneys shut down Graz in Australia. Do you have any proof to substantiate it?
The “blind injection” used in LIGO was a simulation of a real (gravity wave) signal. This was only to keep the LIGO team on their toes, inasmuch as they would treat it as if it were real and file a detection report, etc. It was not (rpt not) a “blind test” as we are discussing it. It’s not as if they had to pick the correct one. The simulated LIGO signal and the real LIGO signal were identical.
Please note I’m not saying blind testing isn’t used sometimes. I’m not discounting the utility of blind tests in some area of science, but it’s certainly not a requirement or a mandatory part of the scientific method. I am, however, discounting blind tests as having much if any usefulness or credibility for audio.
Look, I already explained why blind tests have no meaning for audio. If blind testing was an indispensible part of the scientific method. That statement would not be true. So, for the umpteenth time, for audio blind testing is not part of the scientific method. It may be true in certain specific cases, I would have to think about it. Depends on many factors like what the test procedure is so on. You can make a blanket statement. Who cares about pharma and wine tasting? Please, no angry posts from glupson or anyone else claiming I don’t care if people die or go crazy.
geoffkait"Blind testing is actually not (rpt not) an indisputable tool of science or the scientific method."
This is verifiably false and in fact blind testing is an important, essential and practical tool for use by scientists and researchers HOWEVER and this may be the point you are trying to make it is not useful as a casual, uncontrolled, indiscriminant protocol by those untrained in their design, implementation and analysis as shown above by user "prof" who thinks drug testing in scientific studies does not measure the use of the drug itself or it's interaction, result or influence on the patient but actually is a tool used by scientists to judge the patient themself! This type of misunderstanding, misinformation and confusion is unfortunate for all concerned because it conceals, confounds or obscures the value of such testing when organized, conducted, and administered with those trained in their use, interpretation and application. Most of the participants here do not have the skill, knowledge or ability to properly even discuss such tests and so it is not unreasonable or illogical for those hear to dismiss their use as an audio evaluation tool when not properly controlled such blind testing has no more validity, worth or application than any other non-scientific test, which raises doubts as to whether such blind tests are worth the effort when much simpler tests can be used and suffer no greater tendency towards false results than the improper "scientific" test.
Blind testing is actually not (rpt not) an indisputable tool of science or the scientific method. Especially not when it comes to audio. Blind testing was not used to discover gravity, or what gravity actually is, quantum mechanics, black holes, the Higgs boson, the velocity of light, Avagadro’s number, Planck’s Constant, the amount of dark matter in the universe, orbit mechanics, gravity waves, the distance to the edge of the universe, E= mc2, the photoelectric effect, Hubble constant, the precession of Mercury, the development of computers, the development of digital audio, or the development of the atomic or hydrogen bombs.
So the FDA is also "profoundly confused?" You seem to be conveniently ignoring whatever undermines your claims.
It’s now obvious that you are playing word games, @prof. A drug trial tests the efficacy of a drug. It does not test the patient. It’s that simple.
But the point is, as I’d already reiterated, that you’d made an unclear, generalized claim about the nature of scientifically testing listeners, and blind testing, which allowed the false impression ...
Enjoy all of your "false impressions." Have a nice day.
You’re playing word games, or perhaps you are just profoundly confused.
No, cleeds, I’m being very specific about in what context in which the word "fail" can be, and is, used by researchers.
So the FDA is also "profoundly confused?" when they used the very same language in the way I suggested it is used? You seem to be conveniently ignoring whatever undermines your claims.
If you are conducting a scientific listening test to evaluate potential differences between cables, then you are testing the cables themselves, which are known as the "device(s) under test," or "DUT." You are not testing the listener. If you want to test the listener himself, that’s a task for an audiologist
. Again...that’s confused.
No you don’t have to be an audiologist to test the listener himself. If someone claims he can identify when cable A is playing vs cable B, you don’t need to be an "audiologist" to test that claim. You can set up a good blind test and see if you are stuck with the null hypothesis, or if the person indeed demonstrates that ability. (And this applies to any number of audio related claims that don’t require audiologists).
Such a test is just fine for testing an individual’s claim; it’s not fine for making more general inferences about the "audible difference between cable A and cable B."
But the point is, as I’d already reiterated, that you’d made an unclear, generalized claim about the nature of scientifically testing listeners, and blind testing, which allowed the false impression that double blind tests don’t test listeners, they test the DUT. It merited clarification that blind tests can and do indeed test listeners, so we just have to be really specific about what our blind test is testing. Not that hard to admit, is it?
... My son is in a clinical study now, and the study doctors use that term "failed" for studies and test subjects all the time ...
You’re playing word games, or perhaps you are just profoundly confused. A clinical drug trial tests the efficacy of a drug. It does not test the patient. (The patient has already been tested - to establish whether he suffers a condition that the experimental drug may help treat. He will be tested again, at the conclusion of the trial, to establish the effects of the drug.)
If you are conducting a scientific listening test to evaluate potential differences between cables, then you are testing the cables themselves, which are known as the "device(s) under test," or "DUT." You are not testing the listener.
If you want to test the listener himself, that’s a task for an audiologist. There’s no need to "muddy the water" by introducing various cables into that test.
You seem intent on exposing the frailty of listeners, which is fine. But that’s a separate mission than studying the possible differences between cables.
Uh, Teo, I will let you in on a little secret. Just between you and me. There is no such thing as a valid test or valid test procedure. Not for audio. Haven’t you been paying attention? Besides Randi is not about to give away a million bucks to some audiophile or reviewer. Randi is not an audiophile. He has absolutely no freaking idea if an audiophile or reviewer can hear any of this stuff. He did it to get attention. Hel-loo! I think I should know as I was his most frequent target back then. Although I confess I like seeing my name in print S much as the next fella.
Don’t forget to add that when professional designers of testing regimens and studies... for drug approvals, big pharma and so on..when those people looked at Randi’s proposed testing regimen..they said it was not valid. Not valid at all.
That, if Randi’s proposed methodology was ever used in scientific circles, drug tests and so on..that not one drug would ever be approved for human use. Zero would ever pass if Randi’s proposed regimen was used.
You read that right. So off center and unfair and slated toward Randi’s desires, that the testing regimen was and is entirely invalid for any sort of real testing.
It’s not just about Randi’s claims, it’s about looking close enough at what Randi was trying to push.... to see that it was all a smoke show built out of an invalid model.
Comment on how this thread is going. What have we learned?
1. Naysayers continue to claim blind tests can prove the device tested doesn’t work as advertised. 2. Naysayer and pseudo scientists claim blind testing is part of the scientific method. 3. Naysayers and pseudo skeptics claim negative results for a blind test mean something. 4. Naysayers and pseudo skeptics claim blind tests can ferret out audiophiles who support Cable differences or who support controversial tweaks or ideas such as wire directionality. 5. Naysayers and pseudo skeptics continue to believe that because blind testing is used in pharma and wine industries or because violins were tested blind that means blind testing also works for audio. 6. Naysayers and pseudo skeptics follow in the footsteps of the Amazing Randi who was quick to realize the marketing potential of offering audiophiles a million bucks if they could pass his blind test.
Wow a product that had 100x more profit than the rest put together eh. Most excellent point..... though I'm really at a loss to figure out which product in a stereo store would have that kind of profit margin. Maybe you could help me with that eh.
And we are supposed to actually take you seriously after that most excellent point. Like did you actually give that statement some small scintilla of thought before you blew it out the door or is there a special on hyperbole somewhere that I'm not aware of and you bought too much and just had to use it up because its going to go rancid ( most people don't know this but hyperbole is like fish you leave the sun, after a while it becomes pretty stinky ). And if there is maybe you should get together with prof and make a bulk buy, I mean you guys put your minds to it you could probably go through a train load in a week.
Bottom line conclusions....its a complex solution set that is very much system dependent.
cleeds, You are simply ignoring the relevant details I supplied in my replies.
You’re being silly. The purpose of a drug trial is to test the efficacy of a treatment. It’s not to test the patient.
I’d put the word "fail" in context when talking of scientific testing - a short form, used advisedly, to indicate negative results in a study. And as I said, scientists will indeed use that term, advisedly, when talking about clinical studies. (My son is in a clinical study now, and the study doctors use that term "failed" for studies and test subjects all the time).
And you can find this language used for many clinical trials.
I’d said:
Prof: "For instance study subjects in medical trials can be said to have "failed to respond to the control treatment," etc. "
Perhaps you will claim the FDA is "silly" when, in their guidelines for medical research, they use just such language:
FDA: Selection of subjects for an active control trial can affect outcome; the population studied should be carefully considered in evaluating what the trial has shown. IF MANY SUBJECTS IN A TRIAL HAVE PREVIOUSLY FAILED TO RESPOND TO THE CONTROL TREATMENT, there would be a bias in favor of the new treatment. (My emphasis).
You’re being silly. Of course you can test a subject’s hearing. You can also test a subject for fluency in Spanish, or calculus. But the topic of this thread is, "Do cables really matter?" To ascertain the answer, you test cables, not listeners.
But blind testing itself had come under fire, and you’d stated a more GENERALIZED claim about blind testing:
"A listener can’t "fail" a listening test - that’s a common misnomer about scientific listening tests. A double-blind listening test doesn’t test the listener. It tests the devices under test."
And I was just explaining how that is false, or at best misleading.
Single and double-blind tests can and do test listeners - using "devices" to test the subjects. Alternatively, other types of tests can be oriented towards inferring conclusions about the devices themselves. So we need to be clear about what is being tested. Your reply muddied those waters.
taras22, So your bluff was called. You sought to dazzle with a technical 23-year-old Stereophile article, the relevance of which to my points you can't be bothered to demonstrate. So all you have to fall back on is personal insults again. If your mission was to show you ought not be taken seriously, congratulations! Point made ;-)
@taras22 so you used to work in a hi-fi store? And these were your conclusions about loudspeaker importance? I guess you overlooked all the data about which hi-fi component has more 1000x more distortion than all the rest put together. Perhaps you were preoccupied by the data showing which hi-fi product then had 100x more profit than the rest put together
I really hope for your sake that your current line of work is proving more suitable. All the best.
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