Directionality Explained

djones51
I guess you could say imagination playing tricks, or our biases confirming what we believe. I have a bias that cables that measure similar sound the same. In a sighted test even if the cables have been altered to obviously sound different I would think they sound the same in an unsighted test I might be able to hear differences. It’s just the way humans are wired, all of us.

>>>>Huh? Humans aren’t wired like that at all. Perhaps best to leave the psychological issues to the professionals. Woulda, shoulda, coulda! 🤗

@ glupson and djones51,

You can’t have it both ways..... You guys can’t require measurements to prove what some people say they hear from cables, and then turn around and use your opinions and theories why all cables don’t sound the same.

Not everything can be measured with testing equipment that exists today. So why don’t Cable companies invest money to invent the test equipment to prove to the minority of those that demand only testing can prove ICs and speaker cables don’t all sound the same? Or why Solid core wire ICs and speaker cables are directional? Because they don’t need to. The vast majority of buyers of their products know what they hear and really could care less the why. That’s also why the vast majority of people that can hear the differences don’t post on threads like this one. These type of threads always end up the same way.

John Curl said in an interview, (I’m paraphrasing), the ears are the best instrument for testing how something sounds. He said test equipment is used to try and figure out why something doesn’t sound right to the ears. Trust your ears, not test equipment. You know what the final piece of test equipment Audio Research Corp. uses to test their equipment before it goes out the door? The Warren test equipment. If it doesn’t pass the Warren test it goes back on the bench for testing to find out why it doesn’t sound right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5HNiAgWMuU


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If no one knows the reason why cables may sound different in a given direction, how can you invent test equipment for something you don’t know how or what to measure??

jea48,

"You guys can’t require measurements to prove what some people say they hear from cables, and then turn around and use your opinions and theories why all cables don’t sound the same."

I was merely noticing that your questions...

"Do all ICs sound alike? Do all speaker cables sound alike?"

are a bit detached from practical reality.

Get all the cables in the world and check them. Prove they are different. Once you do, someone will bring another one and claim you did not check them all. And be right.

"If it doesn’t pass the Warren test it goes back on the bench for testing to find out why it doesn’t sound right."

That is a good quality control ad, but not much of an ad. If they are not sure they can consistently put a few electronic parts together, we have a problem.