DO CABLES REALLY MATTER?

😂😂😂
@cd318 really proves the idiom that ignorance is bliss.

cleeds,

A listener can’t "fail" a listening test - that’s a common misnomer about scientific listening tests.

Did you notice the word was in quotes? That indicates it’s use was qualified - used advisedly - in this case a short-form term for not producing positive results in a blind listening test. I’d already clarified in more detail what inferences, strictly speaking, can be drawn from blind tests, which along with the quotes should have indicated I was using the term "fail" advisedly, not in a strict philosophical sense.

Secondly, it’s a misnomer to think that scientists don’t talk of subjects "failing" tests. Of course they do. For instance study subjects in medical trials can be said to have "failed to respond to the control treatment," etc.

More pointedly, you can test claims about individual people. If an individual claims to have a certain ability - e.g. to identify where hidden water is by dowsing - and controlled blind testing shows their positive hits turn out to be the same as expected for random guesses - one can rightly speak of that subject having "failed to demonstrate the ability in question under controlled test conditions." Exactly what I wrote about in the case of an individual audiophile who claims he can hear a difference between cable A and B, where the blind test results don’t support the claim.

A double-blind listening test doesn’t test the listener. It tests the devices under test.

Of course double blind (or single blind) listening tests can test a listener.
What do you think happens in a hearing test? It’s not testing the equipment; it’s testing what the listener can discern. The same can be said when testing an individual’s ability to discern between two audio cables.
Two different cables *may* be producing slightly different signals.  Or they may not.  But you can test if an individual reliably discerns between them.   If they produce statistically relevant postive results, it supports the claim they can hear a difference between the cables, and also implies there *is* a difference to be detected between the cables.  But if they do not produce statistically relevant positive results, you can't determine there is no difference between the cables; only that the listener in question failed to demonstrate the ability to discern between them under controlled conditions.

It may have been an off day for the individual, or it may be that they can’t reliably discern a difference, but other listeners can. So you can test claims relating to individuals via blind tests, using the device in question, but that does not necessarily constitute being able to come to conclusions about the device used in the test.

If you want to test a more general question like "are there audible differences between cable A and cable B?" then you set up many more tests, with a wider arrange of listeners, and gather ever more evidence pro or con for the hypothesis.

One’s confidence grows in scale with the amount of evidence, and at some point it could be reasonable to conclude "cable A is not audibly different than cable B." Just as wide ranging tests of human hearing sets the general audible high frequency limit for humans, with qualifications, at 20kHz.

It’s just a standard inductive inference from particular instances to a general conclusion. It’s never conclusive, but no inductive inference is conclusive in any absolute sense.


(And purveyors of pseudo-science love to harp about inductive inferences not being conclusive - "just because THOSE tests didn’t show an effect for my claim, it doesn’t mean there isn’t one that wouldn’t be demonstrated by another test! You could be wrong you know, you scientific dogmatists!" And they use lack of Absolute Certainty in the scientific method to insert their own wacky claims that "science hasn’t disproved!")

@ cd318

" The fact remains that a scrape the barrel $50 system with some decent speakers from any of the following - Audio Note, ATC, B&W, DeVore, Eclipse TDs, Harbeths, Classic JBLs, KEF, Klipsch, Linkwitz, Magnepans, Monitor Audio, Quad, Sony, Spendor, Tannoy, Vivid Audio, Wilson etc will simply blow away any $50 speaker paired up with uber-overkill electronics using the most eye wateringly expensive interconnects and cables imaginable"

Speaking of "facts" here is a "fact" you may want to consider. Way back when I worked in a stereo store we used to do a slight variation of what you were talking about ( it was a great way to show clients the importance of system matching and it was always a giggle to see the clients response when they heard entry level speakers hooked up to premium electronics and vice versa. We had the cheap speakers right beside the most expensive speakers in the house and the client always thought this great sound came from the expensive speakers...and we would also flip the system going with cheapish electronics and expensive speakers and that never worked that good eh, in fact it really sucked.)

The thing is we did this literally hundreds of times, so in study terms that was a really large n and all with the same result. Bottom line you are absolutely and positively dead wrong, in "fact" you are 180 degrees out of phase on this. But please don’t let this face-plant deter you, just keep swinging for the fences, who knows you may hit one out the park one day. 

@taras22  Spot on. Thanks!

Bottom line you are absolutely and positively dead wrong, in fact you are 180 degrees out of phase on this.

taras22,

Anecdotes from your days selling audio gear do not constitute a refutation of what cd318 wrote. (Selling! And we are to assume no bias may have entered the demonstration scenario to influence an outcomes benefiting the store?)


Not that I’m strictly defending the exact claim cd318 made...but the general spirit of the point made by cd318 - that so long as you have competently designed cheap stuff up front the hierarchy of sonic importance will go to the speakers, is quite reasonable.
If we are exchanging anecdotes: I’ve heard for instance John Otvos’ heralded (when they were available ) Waveform Mach 17 speakers driven at his house via cheap Kenwood amps and cheap no-name cables. That system to my and my audiophile companion’s ears outperformed much of what I’d heard elsewhere (at that time, I’d listened to most of the Big Name stuff, hooked up to gazillion-dollar sources and cables, at stores, shows, audio reviewer’s homes, fellow audiophile set ups, etc).

In terms of more strict test methodology for the type of claim you seem to be making, I don’t see in your example the rigorous attempts to control for possible confounding factors as I see in, for example, this test:

http://matrixhifi.com/contenedor_ppec_eng.htm

ATC SCM 12 speakers hooked up to both low end and high end sources, tested for a group of listeners blinded to the identity of the source.Results were consistent with random guessing.


So on one hand I can look at tests done by people clearly doing their best to reduce the contamination of bias, and on the other your anecdote about a scenario where an audio store sets up a "test" (with little information about the level of rigor) in the service of convincing customers on the merits of buying the expensive gear sold by the store.

Hmm.... I wonder which data seem more reliable ;-)