Do your ears deceive you?


If you think cables, interconnects or other wiring make a difference, yes they do. This is a long article so I won't post it here but will a link describing how blind testing results in correct guessing that is no more accurate than random chance. Enjoy.

 

Blind testing

roadcykler

I’m still surprised that people cannot hear differences in cables. For me, nothing could be easier, and a few of my non-audiophile friends I’ve given cables to, hear it,  and they can even identify what they hear cogently.

But then, my friends were either conductors, play acoustic instruments or it was their major/minor in college, so they KNOW when a cable is correctly reproducing triple-tonguing, or dotted quarter notes. And given I set up their system, and eliminated noise by arranging cables carefully (which means, NOT on top of each other, especially a power cord touching a signal interconnect (speaker cable or interconnect) and an excellent anti-vibration platform (I have Critical Mass Center Stage footers). I think too many systems lack the resolution to hear this, but I still think it is more the noise that people induce by stacking components or, as I’ve already said, cables touching each other.

A good cable should make it clear that one is hearing a Stradivarius, not a Guarneri or an Amati. It would be helpful for people to at least have a passing acquaintance with live music - and I don’t mean the amplified kind. And the number of people familiar with live music seems pretty dismal to me. So, it is not a surprise that there is so much dismissiveness among the people coming into the High End in the past 20 years over things like cable.

they KNOW when a cable is correctly reproducing triple-tonguing, or dotted quarter notes.

Thus is utterly laughable.

A transistor radio does the same thing.

But the industry relies on gullibility.

Speaking of being able to hear the difference between violins, apparently not all accomplished violin players can tell them apart even when they’re actually playing them, and even if they were pretty sure that they could. Maybe the welding goggles changed the tone.

https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/144482863/double-blind-violin-test-can-you-pick-the-strad

 

Yes, and I noticed that the violinmaker in your article - who was part of the research team that administered the test - was very surprised they couldn’t identify what they were playing.

I’m guessing that Henryk Szeryng could identify them, since, when he was in concert, he played either Guaneri or Stradivarius. Interesting, because I can tell a Yamaha flute from a generic one.

Interesting, though. I know musicians who hear changes immediately, including a very dear friend of mine whom, although not a musician, minored in music in college.

He "hears" - and identifies very well - the characteristics of nearly all the components I’ve sent him (I gave him a stereo years ago). I simply ask what he heard with no other input on a discs we both have. He’d hear much of what I heard, which is gratifying, since I’m fairly old. In his case, he uses his system to guide him through classical music compositions as though he was reading a score).

My music training was in real life: my nana taught me how to play piano, starting when I was 10. I didn’t learn anywhere NEAR as well as she would’ve liked, though.