How does cable construction affect sonic character?


I think this altered cartoon expresses the gap between cable skeptics and believers. No one knows what happens in the brain, the machinery between the engineered cable and the subjective experience (expressed in language). It's something miraculous -- or, for skeptics -- it's nothing. 

 

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Just a general note for everyone, the kind of note that has been written here dozens of times, or more, in such threads..

The condensed angry version, of course. tomorrow it might be the kind and gentle overly involved life sucking 20 post version that falls on the all too common 'not listening' ears.. but not today. perhaps today we might get lucky and one malcontent will accept and understand the angry version. That would be nice.

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The ear’s sensitivities are not totally conscious some are unconscious and we can get tired when listening and miss details, in similar fashion as we can with eyes. We slide those filters around and like the eye, we build up detail we understand, over time. and it’s all about very subtle changes in the signal, and that does not show up in the measurement methodology that is in use in the vast number of measurements of cables.

to add, each eye is different and each ear is different. Like intelligence we can have dumb minds vs smart minds, and smart ears vs dumb ears.

With eyes, we can discern VERY small changes in color and tonality, the kind that the finest measurement systems MISS ENTIRELY. I have experience in this in the lab, of a company that makes the finest artist paints on the planet, and I’ve worked in making the best video screens this world knows and I’ve done the same for CRT projectors and digital projectors. All at the the TOP of the trade. I know what I’m talking about.

There’s the alphabet and rote learning book based standards and references they feed you in schools...which is not the final word, it is the starting point for your life learning adventure!!!.... and then there’s the real world Peak Lore. Big Difference. the top is the smallest part of the smallest part, where the one percent have another one percent of them, above them.

the sames sort of things happen in the world of measurement of audio signals and the human ear.

There is a huge body of work regarding ears and hearing, and all which is connected to that.

so don’t let some rubber stamp using poorly informed scientism based ground pounding half or quarter informed monkey come in here and tell you it’s all psychoacustic crap and all cables sound the same.

The problems come when the bulk decides that it must overpower the peak of the given thing, as the bulk mass feels upset that they ’don’t get it’. like the peak of it has something against them and is denigrating them via simply being more capable and able. Not so. but they feel that way, so they go after the things they don’t know and can’t reach. It’s why intelligence and capacity generally hides. all due to the ego of humans.

cables make a difference, and people can hear it reliably. Get over yourself and your limitations and stop beating up others because they can. Jebus.

If you decide that you don’t hear a difference well, that’s fine too. or you can or might be able to train yourself to hear a difference. that 10,000 hours to master something idea. In the end, one might find that they can’t anyway and the effort was wasted. Additionally, to control for a set of variables you are learning on the fly and happen all together. how to sort a very very complex list of things you don’t know?

Additionally...the problem comes in a bonus round form...in that hearing does not have a physically extant adjunct so those who can’t - call out those who can.

this subject is so tired, that if I owned this forum, I’d have a period of banning people (week and then month long on the second offense, etc) who keep bringing it up, until the insistent finally take the hint and give it up.

It might be old hat for some, but it's not necessarily so for everyone.

Not all cables can pass all frequencies precisely (no mater what the level) without any timing delays or transient loss. That's especially true for higher powered situations such as speaker cables.

Manufacturers play on this fact and produce exotic products that are designed to extract massive sums from gullible audiophiles.

That's why this discussion is important and shouldn't dismissed as repetitive. 
 

As someone said, it's a religion. It can't be proven but believers have faith. 

A good sommelier can determine by taste which particular area a wine comes from, which grape, even which particular vineyard and which year. It comes from experience and his/her hyper-sensitive taste buds and smell. Can a laboratory instrument capable of chemical measurements do the same? I doubt it.

I think our listening skills are like that. Some of us are more sensitive to sounds than others. I think listening over a long period of time, and listening to lots of different systems and components brings experience to be able to discern like a good sommelier does. Once you have it, it’s very easy to hear very subtle differences.