Who says cables don't make a difference?

Cleeds,

You are being needlessly pedantic yet illustrating you have not actually done double blind testing and don't understand design of experiments.


If you want to test something, ideally you don't tell the people at all what they are even testing, and in some cases that can be controlled. Rarely it can. We are having a drug trial for a cancer drug but we are not going to tell the cancer patient its a cancer drug as they may be biased toward it working .... see how silly it sounds. We should also include people who don't have cancer :-)


And again, you are wrong. WE ARE testing whether an individual can reliably detect which of two cables is which. That is all. No more, no less. We are not testing two things at the same time. Wow, it's like you really don't understand design of experiments at all. The individual is making the claim They can detect it. They are not making the claim someone somewhere can detect it, they are making the claim They can detect it. Testing a large group of people would be meaningless, as it would only provide a statistical answer, not an exact answer for that person.


If I wanted to test in general whether a cable could possibly introduce an audible change, then yes, I would have to have a large number of test subject and it would only take one person within that group to reliably detect a change for the conclusion to be that it can be done, but if only one person did, I could claim on average most can't.   BUT .... I am not testing the cable, I am testing the audiophiles claim w.r.t. cables.

roberttdid

You are being needlessly pedantic yet illustrating you have not actually done double blind testing and don’t understand design of experiments ... And again, you are wrong ... Wow, it’s like you really don’t understand design of experiments at all ... Testing a large group of people would be meaningless, as it would only provide a statistical answer ...

@Roberttdid, I’d respond to your remarks, but it would be hopeless, because you could trot out another gem such as this:
roberttdid

Let me type this slowly so that it is totally clear. I have run many blind tests ...

Yes, clearly, "testing a large group of people would be meaningless." Worthless. Inconsequential. Of no value. Waste of time. Useless. Proves nothing. Bogus. Yields no data.

Please let us know if you actually plan to conduct such testing, rather than just insisting that others here do your work for them.

Ethan:

WE ARE testing whether an individual can reliably detect which of two cables is which.

BUT .... I am not testing the cable, I am testing the audiophiles claim w.r.t. cables

Hmmmm.... so you are testing people, not audio gear / cables ?

And why? What is your end result? it sounds like your test subjects (people) are this disgraced species, the audiophiles. 

I am sorry you don't understand the most fundamental thing here Cleeds, which is  --it is not the cable that is being tested--, it is the audiophile. You went on a rant telling me I don't know how to do testing, but you don't even know what is being tested.  Don't now play the victim game.

However, one can make the statistical conclusion after testing many audiophiles with many cables, that most of the claims they make w.r.t. cables making a significant difference in the sound To Them, are just that, claims. I don't need them to be biased or unbiased, because again, I am not testing cables, I am testing whether audiophiles can detect the changes in cables that they report absent visual clues.

It sounds like some think audiophiles are a different species that didn't evolve with the same biases as Homosapiens. I wonder if their visual acuity is as unbiased and special as their aural they would make great eyewitnesses as opposed to mere humans.