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The Science of Cables

It seems to me that there is too little scientific, objective evidence for why cables sound the way they do. When I see discussions on cables, physical attributes are discussed; things like shielding, gauge, material, geometry, etc. and rarely are things like resistance, impedance, inductance, capacitance, etc. Why is this? Why aren’t cables discussed in terms of physical measurements very often?

Seems to me like that would increase the customer base. I know several “objectivist” that won’t accept any of your claims unless you have measurements and blind tests. If there were measurements that correlated to what you hear, I think more people would be interested in cables. 

I know cables are often system dependent but there are still many generalizations that can be made.
128x128mkgus
prof
3,473 posts
 
Only in the audio industry, is anyone gullible enough to fall for the wild claims and ridiculous prices of wires and cables selling upward and over $1000.00 per foot.


It's not all audiophiles.  It's mainly the category of audiophiles who fully trust their subjective experience as the primary source of truth.  When you live in that paradigm, "anything is possible" which is why such an extraordinary range of phenomena come to be believed in that paradigm  (It's the same paradigm that ratifies every religion, cult, pseudo-science, etc - note how Flat Earthers constantly talk about "believing what your senses tell you about the world even if some stuffy scientist disagrees!"  Sound a bit familiar?).

taras22
412 posts
 
@prof 

Sound a bit familiar?


Yeah in fact something about the thrust of that post does sound familiar, it sounds like a fundamentalist who is backstopping his dogmatic beliefs with a scientific version of truthiness. 

And speaking of the absolute awesomeness of science here is something about one of the greatest scientists of all time....

I was reading many articles about estimates of the age of the Earth throughout the ages. I was dumbfounded when I read that Newton, arguably one of the greatest scientists ever to have ‘calculated’ the age of the earth, estimated that the Earth was created in 4000 BCE. Johannes Kepler arrived at a similar result
.
And then there was the comment from a physicist just before "Newtonian" physics got smashed by the quantum tsunami ( the following roughly paraphrased)...

....all we need is just a few more decimal places of precision and we'll have the whole thing figured out....

Yup, yup yup science is a real bedrock eh....actually it isn't, its just a tool to explore with, and fairly imprecise at that (  and some playing with the idea of chaos theory may help understand why that matters ) ....to believe otherwise displays a misunderstanding of science.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
“I have nothing against science and development.” 

What a guy! 
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
ieales287 posts02-18-2019 11:13am
It's bingo day at the seniors center.
Sadly, there's more intelligence there than here or the freshman class at almost any college in America.

The 'spiritualists' here remind of the BBE Sonic Maximizer from the early 80's. On poorly engineered program, it could be 'interesting'. On well recorded and mixed material with good sound stage presentation, it was a nauseating buck of mush.

>>>>>Oh, sure, anyone can look around and find some absurd example like yours. Doesn’t  mean anything. 
ieales's avatar
ieales
1,201 posts
 
I cannot see the tweeks of AC, and cables as being band-aids.
That's all they are. ALL interact with source and destination. NONE are 100% neutral.

chaos theory
Don't make me laugh. The initial condition is OFF. The next condition is IDLE. IDLE changes with age, voltage, temperature, pressure and humidity for some transducers. There is no way some high resistance, poor charge density goop is going to ameliorate anything. More than likely, it is undergoing constant change ala the BBE Sonic Maximizer.
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