DO CABLES REALLY MATTER?

I really appreciate your reply elizabeth, thank you!

I leave for a couple hours and look what happens. No single good argument for or agin. I guess I was asking for too much. Lots of tenth grade personal attacks, tho’. And a whole lotta fanny patting by the naysayers. At least that’s something. Let the inquisition continue. The professor doesn’t seem to want to debate, for all his posturing. 😛 Just repeating his same old mantra.

@ prof

"and very slightly tweaked it, say increasing volume by 3dB"

Slightly!? That is simply hilarious. Its sorta the equivalent of saying one should go into a dark room and turn the light on and off to test your sight.

Well, at the very least, this certainly helps explain your position in this discussion.   

taras22,

Would you like to explain further?


Your comment suggests you misunderstand the relationship between altering acoustic energy levels and our perception of loudness.While increasing a sound by 3dB doubles the acoustic energy, we do not perceive a doubling of volume. This site puts it well:

https://www.abdengineering.com/blog/perception-vs-reality/

Perception:
Sound studies tell us time and again that a 3dBA increase in sound level is barely noticeable to the human ear. In fact, you have to raise a sound level by 5dBA before most listeners report a noticeable or significant change. Further, it takes a 10dBA increase before the average listener hears “double the sound.” That’s a far cry from 3dB.

More good info here:

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm

Your reply suggests that raising sound output by 3dB is like going from a dark room to a light room - e.g. implying a difference from soft to loud.  If you thought that raising a sound by 3dB would amount to a major difference in perceived volume, instead of the slight perceived volume increase it really is, you wouldn’t be much use in a mixing studio or post production sound editing job.


Yes, many people *can* perceive smaller increases in sound output, and that factor becomes more pronounced in quick switching scenarios, which is why you really have to be careful level matching for quick switching blind tests.


I can pretty much guarantee that if you were listening in my home theater to a movie, and you left for 1/2 hour, you wouldn’t be able to discern with confidence if I turned it up 1 dB, or 2 dB, and most likely even 3 dB.
(And that’s one reason why audiophiles relying on memory for *truly* subtle sonic differences is problematic).

But quick switching will reveal the differences more easily. I’m altering volume levels all day long, from 1 dB differences to much higher. I chose 3 dB because it is a subtle-but-distinct difference in volume in terms of our perception, that as I said elizabeth would reliably identify in a blind test. (But would not reliably identify, likely, in a test where the time between hearing each file was extended).

So, again, in terms of our perception, yes an increase of 3dB will be heard as a slight tweak in volume, vs a large change in volume. (Which is why if I want to raise the level of one track over another in a subtle degree, but distinctly audible, I often raise it by at least 3dB).


And I chose 3dB as an analogy because it is a subtle *but distinctly audible* change in sound, to illustrate that subtle *but distinctly audible* sounds should be discernible in blind testing fast switching. The claims made for cables are that the changes are *distinctly audible.* (And often not subtle). And if they are distinctly audible - especially audible alterations of bass, high frequencies, etc, they should not disappear in blind testing.


And your problem with this is....?

@prof

"Your comment suggests you misunderstand the relationship between altering acoustic energy levels and our perception of loudness.While increasing a sound by 3dB doubles the acoustic energy, we do not perceive a doubling of volume. "

You can suggest and infer and implicate all you want but that is simply not in what I wrote. And yes I do know a 3db drop is defined as half power and is not related to half acoustic power. That being said, I would contend that we here are not the "average" listeners used in your quote and 3db is not slight as would like us to believe and which btw was the bone of contention ( who knows maybe you were simply projecting and that may go a long way to explaining your problem with cables ) ( btw slight can be defined as " inappreciable, negligible, insignificant" and frankly 3db ain’t none of those eh....and "distinctly" just doesn’t fit well with "inappreciable" or "negligible" or "insignificant" does it )

As for the turning on the light bit, that was just an admittedly silly dig at your obsession with double bind tests, whoops, blind tests. And I did preface it with "sorta the equivalent". Was just trying to get your goat, or more correctly, your herd of goats.