The Truth About Power Cords and there "Real" Price to Performance

atdavid

If You claim that you can hear a difference on Your system, all I have to do is show that You cannot reliably detect the difference on Your system.

Perhaps. But to insist that you can base any assertion on the results of a single test or trial is simply absurd. That's why scientific tests rely on more than one test, more than one trial and - typically - more than one subject.

Of course, if you prefer to believe in certain things because of the results of a single test, that's perfectly fine. But in doing so you abandon any claim you may have to being scientific or objective.

You often hear people claim that as soon as a new cable was swapped the difference was "Immediately recognized", "Not at all subtle", "Could hear things never heard before" and "Transformed their system". So obviously they would have absolutely no problems picking between the two.............Right?

But the thing is I have never seen any reliable proof where someone can pick one over the other much over 50% when blinded. Going by the post here you would think that at least one superlistener can easily differentiate the cables at least 85% of the time in a blind listening test (and probably in a minute). Does anyone know of a reliable scientific test results where anyone could reliably tell the difference between anything costing over $50 (and I am not talking about using the throw away interconnects that come with lo-fi receivers or ultra thin gauge wires).

Here is your chance guys. Get some reliable witnesses and do a scientific blinded test. Show how you can instantly hear the slightest change in your cables. Then post it on all of the forums that it can be done. You will finally put to rest the countless arguments on this subject and prove to the world that expensive cables are better.  You would be famous!

delkal

Get some reliable witnesses and do a scientific blinded test. Show how you can instantly hear the slightest change in your cables.   Then post it on all of the forums that it can be done.   You will finally put to rest the countless arguments on this subject and you would be famous!

You seem to be among the noisy minority here that places such faith in these tests, so please feel free to conduct your own blind listening tests and share the results here. Please be sure to tell us how the test was conducted.

Most audiophiles don't have much interest in such tests. After all, they're tedious, time consuming, and sometimes yield puzzling results. It's more fun to listen to music.
I've particpated in a few such DBTs. I'd never go to the trouble of actually organizing such a test, though. Provided that you truly want useful results, there's actually much more work to conducting such tests than meets the eye of the casual observer. And the results are useless if the test is not properly conducted.

There is some objective collective truth in sound perception, but musical perception is more complex than just sound perception and taking into account the different genetic potential of each one of us and our own different individual listening history, it is impossible and illusory to reduce this individual history to some objective collective laws of hearing...We lear to listen music on our own term with a specific history and potential where we transform our own experience with musical experiences that are very different and varied in their impact for each one of us...Our continuously transforming experience with sound is the way to go deeper in our personal musical experience...Music perception does not reduce to sound perception at all...

When i buy a piece of gear, or evaluate my room, or judge the impact of some modification in my audio system, i dont claim for a universal validity, but i claim and vouch from my own experience and personal history of listening, in my particular room with my particular gear... Reducing that to an A/B/X test is pointless... But testing ourself in some confortable personal environment and with our gear with an A/B test is, like says wisely Paul McGowan of PS audio, a necessary and instructive experiment to improve also ourself ... It is the listener own environment, mastering his own decisions, that are keys to personal improvement in audio and musical experience...

What i speak about is from the subjective point of view of a listener in a process of experiencing music more deeply, and modifying his own perception of sound, with new gear or tweaks etc ,with this goal in mind and with his "own musical perception particular organ" create by his own history...

Reducing that complex and very individual and personal history with ABX tests to some engineering laws of sound emission and perception is only truncating the musical experience to the lowest denominator, it is perhaps good for marketting, or engineering technology, but not a method able to explain musical perception in his relation to sound perception in an individual personal history...

https://www.psaudio.com/askpaul/do-double-blind-tests-work/


the second article post by  thyname go in the same direction...

I have no doubt you can hear differences from the extreme low end cables or thin zip cord vs. one costing $50+. I did my own blinded test with my friends hitting the A/B button with a DIY interconnect and the throw away Chinese interconnect. I could hear a difference and so could could my friends at least 85% of the time.

My point was I can not find any posts on the internet where someone could reliably differentiate between a $100 cable and a $1000-$10,000+ one (and that is what this post was originally about). You would think at one of the large audio conventions some high end company with their uber expensive cables would have some superlistener who could show the world there is a difference. Why don’t they do that?