James Randi vs. Anjou Pear - once and for all

Bjesien,

Because your Papua New Guinea Fertility statue needs recharging from the Water Tank Tweak and so you ended up wasting time surfing the web, instead of pursuing more enjoyable activities...

Now cough up the million!

(For those reaidng this post you need to check out Bjeisen's system to understand him)

The exclusion of people without a "media presence" and the open ended condition of proving that Pear Anjou speaker cables "perform better" than the equivalent Monster cable, (NOT to prove the ability to distinguish one from the other), makes the contest impossible to win.

Personally I think it would be easy to distinguish Pear Anjou from Monster in a high resolution setup (the Anjou's have ultra low inductance numbers while keeping capacitance in check). But if were we take pick an "unbiased" sample group of listeners from the street for blind testing to prove cable A "performs better" than cable B, does any one of us really believe we will be able achieve statistical significant positive result?

Thus a "media presence" person foolish enough to take up the challenge will simply invite ridicule from Randi.org on being a "failure", which they will no doubt portray the attempt as.

To me this challenge is simply a publicity stunt to gain notoriety. Cable naysayers have no doubt lapped this up and are taking this opportunity to gloat. The disingenuity of their claims that no one is up the challenge is rather telling.

Personally I think it would be easy to distinguish Pear Anjou from Monster in a high resolution setup (the Anjou's have ultra low inductance numbers while keeping capacitance in check).

Then why do you think John Atkinson and Dave Clark do not take up the challenge?

If it is "easy to distinguish" then surely the time/effort would be worth a million bucks?

I mean these people do audio listening tests and measurements for a living...it should be a simple matter for a respected & highly discerning reviewer.

After all, the challenge is not about "inductance" or other measurable differences - it appears to be about the ability to demonstrate being able to hear better performance; simply to support the claims, made with ease, in the reviewers articles, which are published in the media and influence a great many buyers. That is the jist of it in the way I understand it. I don't see a trick or impossible challenge as you do. I mean what is impossible about something that can be done with ease?

There are many things about this challenge that make it difficult, if not impossible, to obtain the natural result that anyone would hear in their own system if they tried the same cable comparison under normal circumstances.

Leaving aside the exclusion of anyone who isn't famous, the number of unusual requirements for a valid experiment make the listening situation an unnatural one. Things like wearing a blindfold, or having an acoustically transparent curtain between you and your speakers, along with the stress of being on camera and under the scrutiny of strangers who will act as scientific observers to determine if you win $1 Million, all insure that the listener will be unable to relax and hear the way he would on any given night when enjoying music at home

What this could be called is an experiment to see how much distraction and stress a listener can undergo and still be able to hear differences that are otherwise obvious.

I can think of lots of things that are easy to do under regular circumstances, but become very difficult to perform with cameras, an audience, blindfolds, and a cool million dollars at stake.

BTW, Shadorn, have you ever tried comparing something like original Monster cable (or some other basic fat stranded cable) to any solid-core speaker cable (like Audioquest)? Without regard to which is better, are you saying that you are unable to detect any difference?

Shardone:
"Then why do you think John Atkinson and Dave Clark do not take up the challenge?

If it is "easy to distinguish" then surely the time/effort would be worth a million bucks?"

If the challenge to be able distinguish one from the other in a listening test I think it would be VERY easy indeed! But the challenge is to prove that Pear Anjou "perform better" than the equivalent Monster which is the catch. Since we are talking about listening here, isn't "better" in the ear of the beholder?

BTW, the Pear Anjou cable already does "perform better" in its ultra low inductance measurements. On that count alone they ARE better. But Randi seems to to think properties such as capacitance and inductance matter only to nut cases (read the writeup in his website).