Are cable recommendations worth anything?

ahofer,

From what I understand, anything that looks like a "bet" is frowned upon here. Period. This is a commercial site. I can see why they avoid any potential to appear to be facilitating something like that. They don't have Facebook's lawyers. It is easier and safer just to discourage it. Whether what you suggested was good, valid or otherwise is not the point. Best to just let this one go.

Care to give examples of something 100% provable where results came back 50-50 with a double blind test?   How can you skew bias when you have no idea what is being tested. That makes no sense.

Double blind tests are nothing more than a parlor trick, right up there with seances. You can take something 100% provable and subject people to a DB "test" and come back with 50-50 results. All it proves is that uncertainty increases under the guise of testing. Bias is never eliminated but skewed for all the wrong, unanticipated reasons.

There is no open-and shut on double blind, as that door was shut ages and ages ago. Double blind works. If you don't eliminate bias (which double blind does), then the results of any subjective test are suspect. The only definitive aspect of a double blind test is the "tester" has no idea at any time, either directly or through inadvertent suggestion (hence double blind) what particular product they are testing. Take 30 second to test, take 30 minutes, take 30 days. It can still be double blind. Any reviewer who claims immunity to bias is lying.

Just remember that Paul's opinion on double blind tests is about as informed as our company's janitor. His statement is self serving at best silly for the most part.

To the op, notice any cable suggestion thread and if 20 people respond, there will be 20 different answers so your basic premise and statement is obviously right.

Ignore certain posts that state a good cable will always be good. That just ignores reality. You can create a cable with universally good shielding. You can create a digital cable with uniform and accurate impedance (and shielding). For anything analog, it's always a system that consists of the source, the load and the cable which is not to imply that the cable will make a difference you can hear, but no suggestion is likely to be correct unless it takes into account both the source and the load.

Too much inductance can make a speaker cable warm by attenuating highs but the impact is likely to be subtle. Too much capacitance can make some amplifier/speaker connections unhappy, and you can create subtle increases in distortion with certain cable impedances coupled with certain amplifiers and speakers, though audible or not is highly questionable.


Warm, or bright for interconnects is suspect as differences between most in most systems would be in small fractions of a db, and there are no transmission line issues, settling issues, or any of the myriad of other claims. Shielding can make a huge difference.

Digital cables carrying synchronous audio can certainly impact jitter, but for asynch USB, no, not even a little bit. They can help or hinder noise transmission, but a well designed piece of equipment should reject any noise on USB or Ethernet, so makes me wonder about the claims when connected to $5-10+ equipment. Are they designed that poorly?

And yes, a coat hanger with the right system could sound better than a $10K cable, or worse, and all this talk of geometry, dielectrics, etc. etc. is for the most part pretty meaningless. Weird that only in audio do these things matter. You would think all those high powered scientists would have picked up on these advances by now for their scientific endeavors.

The sillyist of all, the taker of all cakes, is using a battery or anything else to put a bias on the shield/ground or any other part of the cable. Who is the moron who came up with that idea?  What's worse is these turkeys in another piece of marketing literature will try to use triboelectric effect to justify their cable. Bueller? Bueller? ..... This only occurs very low signal levels and very high impedances (think medical). Even with a turntable you would be hard pressed to show there is any triboelectric effect.  However, if you want to ensure you maximize the triboelectric effect (which is a bad thing), then bias the shield so you maximize the charge of the capacitor. The things audiophiles will believe.

ahofer,

I have participated in blind amplifier tests where there was no difference noted, statistically absolutely random, and I have participated where the differences were statistically significant, with some bordering on readily apparent.

I will see if I can pull the details up, but the no difference test was exclusively solid state, Krell, Parasound, a NAD, and I want to say a more "consumer" but not really low end offering, what I would consider "medium" volume, and while I don't remember the model, they were Harbeth's which are generally "easy" to drive speakers.

In the test with apparent differences, there was a mix of amplifiers, included Mac, Pass, Audiosphere, and 2 others and both Magnepan 3.6 and I believe Wilson Sophia. Admittedly this second test was set up to show that there are differences.

Cleeds,

That Michael Fremer article like most of what comes out of his mouth is idiotic.

Even the most staunch anti cable people know that turntable cables are highly impactful on the sound. The article proves nothing really. His comment about leveling I find ludicrous.  Funny of all is his making fun of the guy saying he measured his azimuth being off and Fremer saying that's ludicrous. While unlikely, if there is high frequency channel say at 15-20Khz that is not there are lower frequencies then that can indicate the azimuth is off.

I always get a kick out of this slide in Floyd’s presentation. Start watching at this time location:

https://youtu.be/zrpUDuUtxPM?t=3220

It will of course be noted that "Audio Reviewers" did poorly. Retail audio sales, better, but not great. Selected and trained did by far the best. Selected mainly by good hearing (which I suspect many here no longer have), and trained to listen for specific defects for loudspeakers.

Listen very closely to what he says at 56:38.

Before you try to refute someone who has forgot more about audio and sound than most of us will ever remember, he said the two most important things for a speaker are flat on-axis performance and smooth off axis performance.  Someone in this very thread appears to be presently having a love affair with a speaker that for whatever other faults it may have, its on axis is quite flat, and its off axis is very smooth.