2. cables
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I see the issue with ABX blind testing

I’ve followed many of the cable discussions over the years with interest. I’ve never tested cables & compared the sound other than when I bought an LFD amp & the vendor said that it was best paired with the LFD power cord. That was $450 US and he offered to ship it to me to try & if I didn’t notice a difference I could send it back. I got it, tried it & sent it back. To me there was no difference at all.

Fast forward to today & I have a new system & the issue of cables arises again. I have Mogami cables made by Take Five Audio in Canada. The speaker wire are Mogami 3104, XLRs are Mogami 2549 & the power cords are Powerline 10 with Furutech connectors. All cables are quite well made and I’ve been using them for about 5 years. The vendor that sold me the new equipment insisted that I needed "better" cables and sent along some Transparent Super speaker & XLR cables to try. If I like them I can pay for them.

In every discussion about cables the question is always asked, why don’t you do an ABX blind test? So I was figuring out how I’d do that. I know the reason few do it. It’s not easy to accomplish. I have no problem having a friend come over & swap cables without telling me what he’s done, whether he swapped any at all etc. But from what I can see the benefit, if there is one, will be most noticeable system wide. In other words, just switching one power cable the way I did before won’t be sufficient for you to tell a difference... again, assuming there is one. So I need my friend to swap power cables for my amp/preamp & streamer, XLR cables from my streamer to my preamp, preamp to amp & speakers cables. That takes a good 5-10 minutes. There is no way my brain is retaining what I previously heard and then comparing it to what I currently hear.

The alternative is to connect all of the new cables, listen for a week or so & then switch back & see if you feel you’re missing anything. But then your brain takes over & your biases will have as much impact as any potential change in sound quality.

So I’m stumped as to how to proceed.

A photo of my new setup. McIntosh MC462, C2700, Pure Fidelity Harmony TT, Lumin T3 & Sonus Faber Amati G5 & Gravis V speakers.

dwcda
benanders's avatar
benanders
234 posts
 

soix

8,621 posts

04-20-2024 at 10:13pm 

@benanders Your post is as slanted as it is ineffective in its stated upfront point…

Heyya @soix , was your reply chat GPT-generated? It missed the point of my hypotheticals (= people sometimes perceive what they “want” to, so it’s dubious that audiophiles’ hearing isn’t prone to known human limitations). Oh well, maybe that’s on my writing.

Im not sure I’m clear on how you meant me to interpret the term “measurement” as you applied it in your rebuttal. Seems you haven’t further interest, and that’s fine; otherwise you’re free to read on.

 

@audphile1 that video - strong effort, some audiophiles heed no limits (respect!), except respecting (uh oh, I sense a ‘but’…) the importance of sample size for study of behavior / perception. YouTubers and forum-goers continuing to avoid / dismiss a properly controlled sampling of human listeners for inquiries like this is not in line with methodological reality of how factual info is demonstrated. Is that tendency really due to some audiophiles’ assumption of (1) needing to be skilled / trained at listening to components, or just that (2) they might be inexperienced / untrained about how experiments must be structured? Maybe both are at play?

I respectfully remain doubtful. Not for insisting whether there could be audible differences, but for some audiophiles persistently assuming properly controlled studies haven’t relevance for comparison in hifi. 

That is the common ground x Achilles heel of (1) most / all subjective listening tests and (2) most studies based on device-derived measurements (many lack properly controlled listener preference assessments with which to correlate conclusions). It’s a two-part equation but each “camp” keeps assessing one side only, from what I can tell. Whatever happened to A, B, C it’s easy as 1, 2, 3? As simple as… Doh!

Hence my stance these discrepancies could be resolved.

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,443 posts
 

@benanders I respect that you remain respectfully doubtful.
that’s totally fine. I shared the video as I found it interesting and thought it would be enjoyed by some of the folks here. I had no intention to use it to prove anything to you or others in the cable denying camp. That is a fool’s errand.

benanders's avatar
benanders
234 posts
 

 

 

audphile1

4,147 posts


…I had no intention to use it to prove anything to you or others in the cable denying camp. That is a fool’s errand.

I think there lies the rub, @audphile1 - I’m not denying anything (I haven’t formally tested for it short of some blind swapping of some on-hand types). I’m reiterating the need for demonstration (of it being more than a placebo).
I know it seems like petty semantics, but it’s an important discrepancy between what can be known (fact with supportive evidence for / against), vs. what is assumed but stated as fact (present state of things).

As soon as one robust, properly controlled study is undertaken and shows a significant number of participants perceived difference between two or more types of cable, the stance of “no difference possible” will be disproven, or at least shaken.

Nothing gets proven in science. Disproof is how the process is works.

tonywinga's avatar
tonywinga
844 posts
 

 

What proof do you have that other people are really reading and responding to your posts?

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,443 posts
 

@benanders …

I’m not denying anything (I haven’t formally tested for it
…

this further solidifies what I said above. So here’s the rub…I do not need my entire zip code to hear the changes in my system and nod their heads in approval before I finalize any purchase be it cables, streamers, dacs, etc. The only element that matters to me is what I hear and how much of an improvement there is. There were multiple instances where I had sent cables back. Cables that I had actually high hopes for they just didn’t work out. The change was so negative that I couldn’t endure listening to my system for more than few minutes before getting severe fatigue. These were high priced cables and no, they were not defective.
Do you think I would keep these cables if I had 50 people telling me they like the sound? Absolutely not.

And this, my friend, is where the discussion ends. Please let me know when you get around to trying some cables as an experiment in a comfort of your home and system, and what you had heard.

 

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