Detlof: Actual, double blind tests are of prime importance in things psychological. In pharmaceutical testing, there are always those who will report feeling better because they were seen by a physician and given a pill or medication; this is called the placebo effect. This would skew a test to a possible false positive unless you have a control group receiving placebo treatment to compare to the ones receiving real medication.
Redkiwi, Albertporter, Amanteus: What's to fear about double-blind testing? All I suggested was to actually determine whether "burning in" cables produced audible changes, and well, that's the way to do it. |
Bmpnyc: I know a few wine experts, and they've never done that either. But if someone did, their actions in the scenario I described would show them to be a poseur and not an expert.
Garfish: Trust your senses, yes, but also keep them in check through investigation and understanding, including knowing how to make a comparison. My senses suggest that the sun, planets, and stars all revolve around the earth--that's what it looks like, right?--but I know that's not what actually is happening.
Detlof: I said cables have not been proven to change over time. I may be skeptical about any prospects that they will ever be, but I don't see what's absolutist about that. |
Vantageaudio: Do you seriously find fault with Steve's assertion that all electrons are alike? Really? No, come on, do you? Are you saying they're different? Do different electrons move at different speeds or something? Or with less grain and improved soundstage?
Kdmeyer: As Steve mentioned, the heat buildup in audio cabling is so microscopically minuscule as to be negligible. And that's a good thing, because when metals (copper, silver, et al) heat up, their resistance to current flow increases. That would degrade their performance characteristics, especially for speaker cables.
Detlof: Wine tasters can indeed discern fine gradations between wines. But wines also have been proven to sometimes change with age and environment, whereas cables have not.
I would be highly suspicious, though, of a wine "expert" who looks at the label, sips some wine, and then says "Ah, yes, of course. Pinot noir. Domaine Carneros 1997. It certainly is," then after a palate-cleansing cracker, goes on to the next one, looks at the label, tastes the wine and says, "David Bruce Russian River 1998, yes, I could tell, it has the shadings that one would expect only from this vintage." And so on. Yet in audio, we're supposed to accept this sort of "testing" as "proof" of phenomena that are highly improbable or scientifically impossible. |
Vantageaudio: The wave properties of electrons do not seem to be the issue here, but instead whether electron flow as "burn-in" will somehow alter the crystal structure of the wire and over time improve its properties of conduction. (Wouldn't simply moving, bending, twisting, or coiling the wire affect its "crystal structure?") Schrödinger's wave theory does not even hint that electrons differ amongst themselves, although they will have different energy levels if they receive different amounts of energy. Millikan calculated from his observations that electron mass is about 1/2000 that of a proton or neutron. If it's true that only the valence electrons make up the electron cloud about the positive ions and the electron flow in an electrical conductor when a voltage potential is applied, then it just seems that in any kind of "burn-in" scenario anyone's described here, there's not nearly enough mass or energy in those electrons to even nudge those positive ions about in the lattice, let alone "realign" them. |
Then again, it could all be immaterial, akin to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It seems to me that it would be very easy to see if cables improve with "burn-in." Directly compare "burnt-in" cables with identical "non-burnt-in" cables. Double-blind test, either ABX or same-different. See if a statistically significant number of trials indicate that there is probably an audible difference between them. If not, I don't insist on accepting the null argument; we can do more testing.
And/or do electrical analyses on cables before "burn-in" and after, measuring the conductance and reactance over maybe 5 Hz up to 100 kHz. |
Jadem6: Okay, PLEASE tell me what methods for comparison you prefer, and what steps you take for eliminating prejudices and biases and ensuring that evaluations are made solely on what is audible. If you have a better way, please tell us what it is.
Albertporter: In what way do I or Stevemj reject "finding what works?" That is precisely our point, to accurately find what works. I do not fit your profile of the people you know in audio? I'm okay with that. And I've been involved with a few state of the art audio products here and there, too, with more in the chute.
Adamanteus: You contradict yourself sharply. You label us the "measurement only" crowd (which is not true; measurement is a tool for understanding and refining designs, circuit behavior, etc., not an end in itself), and then decry our insistance on DBT, which involves listening and nothing else, including measurement.
Also, electronic instrumentation (which has nothing to do with double-blind testing) _can_ detect stuff that not even the most golden ear among us can hear, but that doesn't mean everything that can be measured is useful.
I don't know what rules or laws apply in this forum. Apparently not Ohm's Law, laws of physics, etc. ;)
Jerie: In what way is Stevemj "inexperienced, ignorant," blah, blah, blah? He exhibits a strong knowledge of audio, which I find to be a very refreshing change of pace here.
It's inane to me to talk about this being better than that, and then reject making a fair and direct head-to-head comparison between them to see if it's true and to what degree. Why have races with a start and a finish line? Gee, we'll just _discuss_ which car and driver are faster and more skilled and choose the winner that way. Let's nip this baseball season in the bud; everybody knows the best team is ... who? |
Jerie: What's your obsession with other people's gear? Is it evaluating performance by nameplate?
Jadem6: Please tell me what testing you find superior to DBT. If you can't tell me, perhaps you don't have a point to make?
Albertporter: And in what way am I not dedicated to music? Man, last week, Easter week, was my busiest time of the year musically.
I find solace in performance. And knowing and learning how to improve performance, the better to reproduce musical recordings. Knowing and learning involves understanding the technology, which involves the messy involvement with numbers and measurement and testing and experimenting. What's wrong with that?
If you've listened to recordings, attended concerts, gone to films, seen a Broadway show, or watched TV in the past 20 years there's a good chance you've heard some things I've been a part of developing.
Jadem6: I cannot question your ability to cut and paste. Certainly dielectrics have different properties. Knowing how they apply to audio cabling is key, and that's where you need to brush up, if possible. The purpose of a signal cable (IC or speaker) is to convey audio, in the form of electrical signals, from one component to another. The ideal cable will not affect the signal. Any cable will, though, because we are dealing with real properties of resistance, capacitance, and inductance. However, it's not at all difficult to make cable in such a way as to absolutely minimize the effects on the audio, although some people like high-capacitance cables that roll off the highs (because cables that don't would sound too "bright"). And it's not very expensive to do so, either. But there's not a lot of profit margin in selling cables inexpensively to the unsuspecting. |
Albertporter: I can't control what you infer from what I write. If you want to infer that I love numbers more than music, go ahead, it can be your own little alternative to reality.
My insistence on ABX testing is to determine what, if anything, sounds different between two devices, systems, etc., in strict terms of what can be heard, and not influenced by marketing hype, pretty appearances, pricing, ego, etc. With essentially side-by-side comparison, it can resolve even fine distinctions more reliably than can sequential absolute evaluations of the type you advocate, which is prone to false detection of non-existant differences through bias, suggestion, or even fakery. Note also that ABX testing, as I had described earlier but it apparently didn't sink in, has nothing to do with numbers, measurements, or specs. Also contrary to Redkiwi's misunderstanding, ABX testing is not limited to short listening periods, but is at the listener's own discretion. Laugh if you like, but you're the one buying $$$$ cables and can't prove they improve anything.
Sedond: If that's what you want to believe I've contributed to audio, go ahead and believe it. Again, reality does not follow what you or I or anyone imagines, however desperately synthesized.
Sean: Resistance in series with an amplifier output does NOT raise the damping factor; it lowers it. The resistance of the speaker wire is parasitic and can be considered part of the output impedance. In particular, it will decrease the amplifier's ability to absorb the back EMF from the woofer. It will also cause a voltage-divider phenomenon, in which frequency-dependent variations in the speaker impedance cause its frequency response to become more irregular. |
