Too good a post to waste


On a thread that is a running example of the textual equivalent of nonstop cat videos. So here it is again.


I could understand the cables are snake-oil doubters and take them seriously- in 1980. Back then there was no internet, Stereo Review was pretty much it, and Julian Hirsch was the Oracle of all things audio. Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch said if it measures the same it sounds the same. Wire is wire, and that was that. 

Even then though J. Gordon Holt had already started the movement that was to become Stereophile. JGH took the opposing view that our listening experience is what counts. Its nice if you can measure it but if you can’t that’s your problem not ours. 

Stereo Review and the measurers owned the market back then. The market gave us amplifier wars, as manufacturers competed for ever more power with ever lower distortion. For years this went on, until one day "measures great sounds bad" became a thing.

Could be some here besides me lived through and remember this. If you did, and if you were reading JGH back then, I tip my hat to you, sir! I fell prey to Hirsch and his siren song that you can have it all for cheap and don’t really have to learn to listen. Talk about snake-oil! A lot of us bought into it. Sorry to say.

But anyway like I was saying it was easy to believe the lie back then because it was so prevalent and also because what wire there was that sounded better didn’t really sound a whole lot better.

Now though even budget wire sounds so much better than what comes off a reel you’d have to be deaf not to notice. Really good wires sound so good you’d notice even if you ARE deaf! No kidding. My aunt Bessie was deaf as a stone but she could FEEL the sound at a high enough volume, knew it was music. The dynamic punch of my CTS cables is so much greater than ordinary 14 ga wire I would bet my deaf from birth aunt Bessie could "hear" the difference. Certain so-called audiophiles here, I'm not so sure.

Oh and not done beating the dead horse quite yet, according to my calendar its 2020, a solid 40 years past 1980. Stereo Review is dead and buried. Stereophile lives on. A whole multi-billion dollar industry built on wire not being wire thrives. Maybe the measurement people can chalk up and quantify from that just how many years, and billions, they are out of date and in denial. 
128x128millercarbon
fuzztone, +1 *L*  Indeed....

I was a fan of Audio.  I own a soldering pencil, the old Weller died awhile ago.  Audio systems vs. cars?  Your system, despite enthusiasm, won't kill or maim you or anyone else.  Make you tone deaf, perhaps....at least to 'opposing opinions'. Despite glowing reviews, your wetware between the ears will always be the final opinion that rules.  A lot of the SOTA offerings still strike this cynic as 'sonic jewelry'; the cost of the physical object d'art outweighs the normally unseen circuitry. (If it looks good, it must sound good as well, Right?).

I've more heretical (mho) things to 'voice', but I need to go sharpen my keyboard....

'Ciao *S*
As worthwhile as an objective/numbers assessment might be, you're looking for emotional satisfaction from audio playback

Exactly. The emotional connection becomes greater with each layer of haze that is removed.
I don't hallucinate like I don't imagine what I'm hearing... Although taking acid is another story...
The scales fell from my eyes when I listened to my first van den Hul hybrid cables. I was in the hobby earlier, but took a long hiatus. I came back. Now is van den Hul my favorite cable? No. But, before I got back to the chair, I thought Wow. Then all his later cables came out. Naah. Not for me. But, in all the subjective listening, I still look at R, L, and C. And phase. I have yet to hear cables that can’t go back to some conflagration of measurements. We are only talking wire here. The crap gets real moving onto what’s connected at the ends of wire. But I still think much can be explained when you look at wire as what it is. Wire is a waveguide. Mr Tesla taught us that before there was hi-fi in any form. I still believe he was right. Is that everything? Nope. But it is the irrefutable base. Let the flames begin. But, I was buried in complex waveform analysis for work before I became just another audiophool. And I are one. The truth is somewhere between anti-cables and Machina Magica Mysteriosa. At those two extremes, I wonder that people pay money for it. We continue to get closer to truth and in the meantime, I will settle for fun. If it ain’t fun, who cares how it measures; they didn’t get it right. Now, moving beyond cable - it gets truly complex.
As it happens with most things, JH was only half right when he said if it measures the same, it should sound the same. We all know the story of Bob Carver making one of his amps sound like an ARC amp by measuring what he calls the “transfer function” of the ARC amp and replicating it on his amp. It was verified legit by the folks from Stereophile magazine no less. The problem with measuring is you have to know what to measure and by all measures we are not there yet and probably will never be. Considering that we are comparing two ears and a brain with crude measuring devices, we are not even close. I would go with two ears and a brain any day and twice on Sundays.