Quick question for the Cables Don't Make a Difference Crowd.

The funny part of all these cable magical sounds is that the big majority of people into this are people that on average are older than 30 years of age, meaning humans as early in their thirties start losing their hearing mostly in the upper registers, getting worse as the years go by; nonetheless, we have here many people in their 40s-80s hearing better sound coming out of cables.

Of course a cable can and most definitely make a difference in the transmission of the signal, but for all these older people who hear all these magical new sounds (I wonder how since hearing loss is a fact at those ages) I would say that a lot of it has to do with a placebo effect.

@robert_1 also consider the fact that these elder statesmen of audio and audio cables have more disposable income, therefore have much nicer hi-fi systems than those 30 and under. More revealing systems not some of the internet/big box lo-fi. You know the stuff the ASR crowd buys. 

@boxcarman

”….The cable unbelievers either don’t have audiophile ears or an unresolving system where wires are just wires….”

So says His Audio Excellency, sacred holder of the highest knowledge in all things audio.

Maybe His Audio Excellency speaks in jest?

Nevertheless. Let me say two things in refutation.

- as for the revealing system, see theaudioatticvinylsundays.com , go to the bottom of the about page. Note that I don’t even bother to mention cables in there, but if you must know, I use monster for speaker cable and something or other (sorry I’m not in front of my system right now) to connect the components that costs around $5-$7 a foot.

- as for the ears, why is it that during the listening sessions that I hold, that it is I that is always pointing out characteristics in the music that my audience don’t hear? It’s not because I have better - “audio quality” is how I think you put it - ears, it’s because people hear differently, their brains are wired differently, they are drawn to different sounds, they listen differently. Same thing with random ambient sound: I can be somewhere in a room or outdoors, I’ll hear something (in spite of my cervical stenosis-induced tinnitus) and say something about it, the other people with me are like wtf are you talking about and I say sssh listen, and then they hear it?

I will say that most people - thanks to social media - have forgotten how to sit still and listen. But that’s a related topic.

But they all are stunned - stunned - by the quality of sound from my system. Comments run from “never ever heard music sound like that before”, “better than live music”, “when I die, I’m going to ask … no, I’m going to tell God to send me back here.”

With cables that don’t cost U.S. $5M per foot.

I stopped believing in the Catholic Church at age 9.
I stopped believing in God at age 13.
Do you really think that I’m going to genuflect in The Church of Audio before The Altar of Cable Theology at age 70?

I’m not going there.

PS: I wonder if this offends Tammy and whomever in this crowd jerks her chain: let’s see how long this post lasts.

PPS:

Poppy Crum on Led Zeppelin and why people hear either what they want to hear or what they are directed to or told to hear, in Audio Myths, from 5:12 to 9:28:

https://youtu.be/BYTlN6wjcvQ?si=7qn-YZsXI2BzRH_s

The entire talk is worth listening to, especially JJ Johnson who speaks just before Poppy and is on point to my discussion.

Poppy Crum on Sensory perception and empathy

https://youtu.be/SYytiQmXNTc?si=yzIIePDQgicAGFOn

Poppy Crumb is chief audio engineer at Dolby.

@robert_1 -

          Many of us, "older people" still get to listen to live music, human voices, and instruments on a regular (if not daily) basis.      iow: We still know what life/live sounds like, whether we're paying attention, or not.

           While one of the many variables affecting our listening abilities may  be hearing loss; everyone isn't subject to it in the same manner, or: to the same degree.                        

             I can't speak for everyone, but: I want my system to reproduce the sounds of what I hear live, including hall/studio ambience, or whatever the Recording Engineer (or I, on my recordings) intended, without the editing/colorations/interferences, that so many easily replaceable components offer.

                                                      Happy listening!

Poppy Crumb is chief audio engineer at Dolby. 

     "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."  (Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse , 1872) 

     "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon,"  (Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873)

      "The super computer is technologically impossible.  It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required." (Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University)                        

      "There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."  (Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923)

      "Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." (Dr. Lee DeForest, Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television)

      "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible!" (Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895) 

      "The bomb will never go off.  I speak as an expert in explosives."  (Admiral William Leahy, re: US Atomic Bomb Project) 

     When the steam locomotive came on the scene; the best (scientific) minds proclaimed, "The human body cannot survive speeds in excess of 35MPH."

      Until recently (21st Century); and the advent of the relatively new science of Fluid Dynamics, the best (scientific) minds involved in Aerodynamics, could not fathom how a bumblebee stays aloft. 

     Often; Science has to catch up with the facts/phenomena of Nature and/or, "reality" (our universe). 

     I haven't been in school since the 60's, but- at Case Institute of Technology; the Physics Prof always emphasized what we were studying was, "Electrical THEORY."  He strongly made a point of the fact that no one had yet actually observed electrons (how they behave on the quantum level) and that only some things can really be called, "LAWS." (ie: Ohm, Kirchoff, Faraday)   

                         PERHAPS: that's changed in recent years and I missed it?