I am sick of cables

Mapman -- Excellent thoughtful post.

Some of you may be interested in the following, written by the late distinguished speaker designer and manufacturer John Dunlavy.

http://www.verber.com/mark/ce/cables.html

Towards the end of this post, he describes controlled experiments he performed in which audiophiles visiting his studio were asked to compare the sound of various cables to zip cord. Invariably "the largest and sexiest looking cable always scored best - even though the CABLES WERE NEVER CHANGED and they listened to the ZIP Cord the entire time."

Regards,
-- Al

I owmed a pair of Dunlavy SC-V speakers (my first high end speakers). To be fair, I think Mr. Dunlavy's experiment was padded, given that the only variable was the individuals own psychology and bias. Everything makes a difference and all of it has a worth best determined by it's owner:)

In regard to people hearing differences in a false double blind test.

There is no doubt the placebo effect affects some people some of the time. However, in the long term, those taking the placebo may suffer needlessly, just as the guy listening to the inferior cable will. Another reason double blind testing doesn't work in audio is, what constitutes an objectively agreed upon sonic preference amongst the experimental group. It is impossible to ojectively quantify changes to a subjectively defined model. We only have our sonic preferences to judge by, the sound of live music is not reproducable on audio systems to this point. Until it is, we cannote have an objective experimental group (audio system).

I've never understood the objective argument amongst audiophiles, empirical evidence, even if subjective and anecdotal, is much more valuable to me. If someone prefers cable A to cable B, who am I to say he doesn't hear cable A as preferable. Cable A may be more or less expensive, either way, it doesn't involve me, why should I care.

Objectivity and/or measurements only tell some of the story, often, we don't even know how measurements correlate to certain sonic attributes.

In the end, I guess it shouldn't matter to us whether someone prefers ultra expensive or inexpensive cables, whatever floats their boat makes them happy, that should be enough.

Bravo Sns!!

Al

This kind of thing has been demonstrated many times. One of the most lauded systems on Audiogon suffered a similar fate. Sighted the "special" cable sounded best without doubt but unsighted it was not possible to tell when the "special" cable was in the loop.