How accurate are cable descriptions for your system?

Hi all,

I appreciate the advice but I should probably state it plainly -- I’m not shopping for cables, I’m not really interested in upgrades at this point, etc.

My question arises out of interest in the phenomenological, epistemic elements involved -- and also in the way in which people interpret online (or other) advice.

There is a tremendous amount of conceptual looseness in this hobby, and one way I’ve been able to create what I think is a very decent system is by figuring out who to listen to, who to ignore, what control factors matter, etc. If you look back at a lot of my posts, they’re often (not always) driven by my wider project of establishing linguistic, sensory, and psycho-acoustic metrics. Otherwise, acquisition becomes a Sisyphusean guessing game.

@hilde45

’conceptual looseness’ is a nice, respectful term for what happens way too often in the cable business, with is pure b-s to suck $ out of wallets, playing on frailties of the audiophile mind and ego...

i am not quite as nice as you... :)

@jjss49 Good point. I was thinking that, overall, there is a lot of that in audio. Someone says the sound is "bright" or "tubby" or... "musical," etc. and it is often hard to really get a definite or semi-definite sense of what is designated in sensory experience.

As with the sense modalities of taste and smell, we have a vocabulary for aural phenomenon that is comparatively vague -- compared to vision-vocabulary. Still, we do try and often it can take a while. But when something is being sold, well, caution to the wind!

So cable believers only, deniers not allowed. If a difference is never heard possibly your acute face-saving imagination sets in…that’s grounds for acceptable opinions. Sounds like more boring cable conversation can’t prove it 90% of the time so let’s spend the money, make up a special language then carry the BS pass the cash register. Wonder how long any of this stuff actually sits in the same household working a system, now there’s a study.

Cheers

A vocabulary based on subjective impressions is not enough...

But we must correlate our impressions about sound with an objective background, which is acoustic and psycho-acoustic vocabulary...

If not, "tasting" cables is, unlike tasting wine which is some form of a learned art, is an arbitrary description which no one could related to...Because of all the difference between room/system and hearing history and experiences between us...

But if i say this "cable" improve the " listener envelopment" / "source width ratio", LV/ASW ratio, without unbalancing the relation between high frequencies and bass but increasing timbre perception, i will buy it ...

If not, keep it....

By the way the worst thing to do is calling people cables believers or cables naysayers.... The two groups are wrong...Like the few objective zealots versus some subjective fetichists...

We must learn to listen before speaking.... Acoustic is the only encompassing objective background here, not mere electrical measures...

By the way if a cable change a too " tubby" sound in a more brightier one in one system , or vice versa, it is not enough to be proof that this cable is good in general , because his impact is related to a precise system unbalance problem which this cable help to forgot about but do not really solve, then a change here will not be a proof of an improvement at all for all system and for everyone...

It will only be a change which will seems for the better for someone...An improvement must be based on objective general solution and device control...An improvement is not a change...A improvement increase the way you relate to all aspect of sound, it is not a different "color"...

This is why we need to use acoustic vocabulary not an audiophile vocabulary inherited from gear engineering tasting marketing...