scientific double blinded cable test

It is immediately apparrant for even a casual reader of the forum to correctly conclude that gdhal attempted to perpetrate a fraud upon the Audiogon community of audiophiles and the many posts of his that have been deleted by the moderators further support this simple observation. I am grateful to the dedicated, alert and well informed staff for taking action to prevent gdhal from defrauding someone of good faith of 10's of thousands of dollars and this is why I insisted with him that all discussion  of his "challenge" would be in public because it would expose him. What is a rather strange aspect of his extortion-fraud effort  is that it was attempted to have been executed under the cloak of "science" and exploration intended to reveal "truth" when really it was an outright fraud the very type of deception so many of these self-proclaimed "scientists" here accuse others of with their frequent accusations of "snake oil" against those who can hear differences in cables!

I did a blind test as follows: I had two identical CD players playing the same disc and started them at the same time so they were exactly in sync.   With two sets of interconnect running into the amp inputs I could use the remote to switch inputs.  If I did this switch rapidly at the start of each test I had no idea which input was playing when the test started. I then tested between the two at a touch of the button. As long as I didn’t peep at the amp display I had no idea which was playing. 

Initially I ran two sets of identical £14 Maplin interconnect cable (UK electrical retailer) to ensure the two CD players sounded the same. They did.  In this test I could not perceive a difference between the two CD players.    Next I simply compared different interconnects. 

I had four interconnects to trial (Maplin at £14, 3 others ranging from £800 to £1500).  I was testing Maplin (cable A) vs another (cable B/C/D) in each case.  With two of the Interconnects (B and C) the differences were subtle: results showed I chose the expensive cable more than 50% of the time,  but the differences were minor and for me not worth the money. With cable D the difference was massive, and it was immediately obvious which one I was listening to, so much so I choose cable D over A 100% of the time (each test was done around 20 times).  I was intending to go on to test B vs C/D etc but as D was so far and away better I didn’t bother. I bought cable D (which incidentally was the cheapest of B,C and D). 

This is is such an easy test to do and so easy to set up I'm surprised Hifi reviewers don’t do it.    The only downside was that the only way to get two identical CD players for me was to use two 1990s cheapish Denon CD players, rather than the high end CD player usually in my system.  I did double check the results by doing non-blind testing between the interconnects with my regular CD player and found the same results. In this instance by the time I had changed the cables I actually could not detect a difference between A and B/C but the difference between A and D was even more apparent. 

Yes of course this is another example of a proper, scientific, verifiable, and repeatable excercise that could be replicated by others' who are genuinely interested in exploring the audibility of differences between cables in a Music Reproduction System and those who question such an outcome are suggested to do as you have done and perform there own research before asserting they're beliefs in this forum as though they had scientific validity. 

I find it hard to comprehend this verbal diarrhea, but what I do understand is that clearthink thinks science is on his side. Well, have a look at the links I mentioned earlier. Their story is quite different, as anyone here can freely find out. There is no need to take clearthink's garbled words for it.

Speaking of verbal diarrhea, here is an excerpt from one the links willemj referred to, this one apparently minutes of an AES meeting on the dodgy subject of wire directionality. This ought to be interesting, right?

“Steve (guest technician) started by making a distinction between things we can measure in wire (resistance, capacitance, inductance), and those things we can’t measure (soundstage, "detail", "directionality", and other things you can "hear"). There is rarely a correlation between what you can measure and what you can hear.”

>>>>Steve was apparently not aware of the HiFi Tuning data that showed directionality measurements of fuses. Or that ANY wire or cable can be measured with a volt ohm meter and shows resistance differences according to direction. Duh! There is rarely a correlation between what you can measure and what you can hear? Oh, please! Give me a break!

“For best electron flow, you want to use a metal that has low resistance. In circular-mil ohms per foot at 20°C., silver leads the way at 9.9, copper is next at 10.4, gold is 14.7, aluminum is 17, nickel is 47, and steel is 74. Although silver is the best conductor, it has several disadvantages: it tarnishes, which then interferes with connection; it is pretty expensive; and it cannot be annealed. Wire is made by repeatedly pushing metal through ever-smaller dies, until it is the size you want. This process is really boring to watch, and now is all done by robots. After going through the dies, the wire is very brittle and easy to break. Copper wire can be heated to 700 and annealed, which lines up the crystalline structure and removes the brittleness, making it very useful for cable purposes.”

>>>>For best electron flow? Are they kidding? The electrons are not (rpt not) flowing. Photons are flowing. Electrons are barely moving. Hel-loo! I submit that annealing will not “line up” the crystal structure that has been irreparably distorted by being drawn through the die. And establishing directionality! I mean come on, that doesn’t even make sense.

“Directionality, or the idea that electricity flows better in one direction through a cable than the other, is a common concept among certain self-identified audiophiles. Belden did a double-blind test for cable directionality in conjunction with an audiophile magazine. The end result was perfectly random. Belden is still happy to manufacture and sell directional cables to enthusiasts. They make up a long length of cable, cut it in segments, identify the ends of the segments so they know how it came off the spool (length A->B, length B->C, length C->D, etc), and then let the customer identify by careful listening which direction is "better". Over thousands of cables sold, the chosen "best" signal flow is random, for segments cut from the same spool!

>>>>Certain self-identified audiophiles? Whoa! Hey, what are they talking about? Huh? Belden did a double blind test for cable directionality with an audiophile magazine? Where is it? What magazine? Talk is cheap!

>>>>How would Belden or anyone know that the thousands of Belden cables sold were random for directionality? I mean, come, on people! Get real! Where’s the data? Belden must be selling their cables to a different set of enthusiasts since almost everyone on this forum reports obviously directionality. This whole AES report is very hard to swallow. Are they lying? Maybe.

your friend and humble scribe,

geoff kait
machina dramatica