Too good a post to waste

I was talking about Miller claiming his $1,200 bargain system was magically transformed by $1,200 interconnects which is ... which the nicest I can put is questionable.   If you have left right interconnects, RCA, and the ground breaks on one of those cables (workmanship, rough use), the system will still work just fine, but perhaps not optimum. This was just one of many things (like dirty contacts), that was a far more likely reason for a big change in sound by changing interconnects.

roberttdid

... It is not unusual to loose the ground on just one of the interconnects.

You must be using very poor quality connectors and/or have equipment with poor quality jacks. Connectors may be even more important that the cable itself, so it’s not a surprise if you don’t hear differences between cables.

What he's saying is he's a lousy listener. What he's saying is the only way he notices any difference is if he's broken a wire. Which he does not consider unusual. So he's also saying spaz, or using really old poorly made crap. Take your pick.

If something sounds markedly different when I change an interconnect, then it was always because something was wrong.

I am not sure to understand.... When i change my cheaper interconnect between my amplifier and my dac for a Morrow m3 and i immediately hear a better sound, this is because the first interconnect was wrong or something else wrong, not because the Morrow was a better interconnect? is this your saying?

  

Keep doing you Miller. If something sounds markedly different when I change an interconnect, then it was always because something was wrong. Usually of course it happens just from moving it. It is not unusual to loose the ground on just one of the interconnects, and everything will still work.

Psychologists have a term for that: projection. Since you can't hear, or remember, or understand what does what, you project your inadequacy and confusion onto others. Projection. Try not to do that.

Shocking that you never considered it wasn't the $1,200 interconnect, but perhaps you, or maybe just the act of wiping dirty contacts, or the other interconnect was faulty.

Once built a $1200 budget system for a friend. While it was burning in I was playing around. Everyone thinks cables are such a small part. Hardly anyone understands the truth- because they have not done this: I put a $1200 interconnect in this $1200 system. It was SHOCKING how good this little budget system was with that interconnect in there! 

I am NOT saying to spend half your budget on one interconnect. What I AM saying is anyone thinks wire is only 5% has a lot to learn.

You go looking for better sound with wires the swamp creatures come after you.

The same brain primitive creatures instead of listening experiments will kill you if you speak not of wires but of some crystals or stones effects on sound quality.... :)


I use more than 20 kind of stones like an equalizer or like the changing of tubes in an amplifier and with the greatest of success, the only prerequisite was using your discriminative ears... This subject is so touchy than re-reading now my own post I judge it near trolling and provocative.... Truth is sometimes.... …..I am not a sheep and never been one....

Its not a swamp, any more than pre-amps or speakers are a swamp. The only difference is the everyone can talk about speakers and amps without mosquitoes, snakes, and crocodiles coming after you. Its not the wire that makes the swamp but the putrid creatures lurking in wait for unsuspecting victims. You go looking for better sound with speakers no problem. You go looking for better sound with wires the swamp creatures come after you.

Starting from ordinary wire everything is a huge step up. There's even bigger steps up from there, but that's where it gets a little more of a challenge. Not because there aren't lots better, but because wire is no different than anything else. You have to pay just as much attention to listener reviews of wire as anything else. Do that and you will be amazed how much better your system can get doing nothing more than upgrading wire.

+1 baclagg 

I have only recently waded into the cable swamp. I decided to try replacing my lamp wire with a set of budget cables. I purchased a set of Blue Jeans 5200UP speaker cables with locking banana ends and a pair of LC-1 RCA connector audio cables. I am running a Hegel H390 into a pair of Focal Aria 936 speakers. My source is a Cambridge Audio Azur 651 CD player. I immediately noticed more bass when I started using the new cables. Other elements are improved as well, but you can feel the bass difference.

     The profit margin of the any old wire will do crowd is minimal.  Advertisers rarely pay to tout that their product is no better than another.  Plus, apparently , no one told the wire is wire crowd that the choice of what to measure was dictated by the availability of commercial measuring equipment, not by what anyone heard.     Despite the fact that I use and like the site, I like to say, Who Snopes Snopes?
     The advertisers won.  You buy what the dealers are told they can make money by selling.

The recently decreased Art Dudley. I guess that’s one way of putting it. I would have saved my old Absolute Sound issues but the pages were all stuck together.

I kept my Audio, IAR and Listener mags.  Threw out the High Fidelity and did not trust Stereo Review.   I prefer the narratives of Absolute Sound to Stereophile although I like several writers of both mags (including the recently deceased Art Dudley).  I read more on-line articles now from Positive Feedback, Enjoy the Music, The Audiobeat, Soundstage Ultra and AnalogPlanet.  I maybe reading too much audio related stuff but I listen to music 1.5 hours or more every evening and 4+ hours on weekends.  For 20 years I read Fanfare mag which is 100% music reviews.  I also read International Record&Piano Review, Opera News & Grammaphone occasionally,   I often read while listening to music as well.  

As to cabling preferences, I began that journey in the 1970s with Audiosource cables which were superior to both zip cord/RCA and Monster.  Since 2000, I've used GroverHuffman.com cables and am the beta tester (I still pay for the cables, the design/labor is 90% of the cost).  The best system(s) I've every heard used MasterBuilt cabling which is possibly the most expensive.  I'm planning to upgrade my speakers b$35,000-$50,000, not the cabling.  

More to the point, people vilify Stereo Review simply because they fixate on Julian Hirsch.  Anyone who took his writings as gospel is either easily lead or fooled (your choice).   I started reading Stereo Review in 1970, simply for the music reviews and artists' profiles, the added bonus for me, was that the magazine provided a quick way to find out what was new in audio through both articles and advertising.  

Julian Hirsch's part of the magazine was intriguing only because he was attempting to use a quantified method to evaluate equipment.   But, if you were "into" audio, it became readily apparent that, although the measurements could quantify certain aspects of performance, the measurements didn't tell you anything about how the equipment sounded.

I looked at the equipment reviews simply as a method of seeing relative performance measurements that might be applicable to a piece of equipment.   As an example, wow and flutter are certainly applicable to the sound of a tape machine.  Finding out the performance differences between a TEAC versus an Akai, Sony, or Pioneer would give a starting point in evaluating the overall sound.

However, measurements can go beyond simply quantifying chosen performance characteristics if you know what measurement are important, and more importantly, know how to apply them.  This was demonstrated in the mid-1980's by Bob Carver through the Stereophile Challenge when Bob made a solid state amplifier sound like a tube amp and the "golden ears" finally gave up trying to find a difference in sound and conceded he'd won.

One of the problems with anecdotal equipment reviews sans any type of measurements is that people's ears are as variable as their eyes.  People have "tin ears" just like some people have color perception problems.  This was proven to me nearly daily when I worked in an audio store and would demonstrate a very expensive system versus an inexpensive one and the person would say, "I can't hear the difference." 

The opposite to that are the people who think they can "hear" every change no matter how small - like the direction a fuse is installed.  That's when I question the real reason they have an audio system.  Are they interested in listening to music or do they simply want to use  the music to listen to the equipment for imagined faults that need improvement? When that happens, the pursuit of perfection seems to be the point of the equipment rather than a way to listen to the art involved in making music.

I've had the same system for nearly 20 years at this point.  When I go listen to new equipment I find it provides a different, not necessarily better sound - so, I keep what I have and enjoy the music.

Strangely enough it turns out that no matter what you are listening to, the music or the equipment, you are in the end listening to it through the equipment. Try as we might, there is no such thing as music that just appears in the room without any equipment. (It only seems that way sometimes, and when yours is as good as mine you will know what I mean.) So either way it does in fact matter how the equipment sounds. Not measures. Sounds.

The subject by the way is neither Stereo Review nor Julian Hirsch. The subject is the mistaken and counterproductive belief that something doesn’t exist until we can measure it. In this particular case its cables are snake oil, the argument for which boils down to, "there can’t be any difference, because we can’t measure any difference." But this same fallacy applies to lots of things.

Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch merely happen to be the two most widely recognized exemplars of this flawed philosophy. That’s why they were used. It has nothing to do with any personal animosity. I grew up with Stereo Review. I loved those same music articles. But on this score they let us down, big time.

Like it or not, in order to enjoy music audiophiles require equipment. Until this changes we will all be a whole lot better served by the Stereophile/JGH approach than SR/JH. That is all.

It’s interesting that people feel the need to totally write-off Stereo Review simply because of Julian Hirsch. Did you ever actually READ any of the music section? The magazine also provided long, and involved music articles from authors like: Lester Bangs, Noel Coppage, and Joel Vance. But, since the "audio hobby" for most people involves listening to equipment rather than music, the predilection to fixate solely on Julian Hirsch to grind the very tiny axe they've brought to the discussion is not surprising...

Whoops sorry... Spoiler alert... doh.

Good luck with the knee, mine is probably 95% now so no complaints here.

Uber, I need to finish season 2. Good goal for a post surgery time killer. : )

David
I just finished watching season 2 of Altered Carbon couple nights ago.
Ready for Poe to resurrect Tak!

It's the Agon version of Netflix's Altered Carbon.

Altered User Name. Same Schtick.

+1 miller
+2 Boxer.

I just saw Elvis jogging.

And then he is having tea with Hitler and Michael Jackson.

Elvis was alone.

On the other hand, it was just the other day that I saw Bruce Lee getting coffee at my local coffee shop with some of his friends.

Did "atdavid" change his name again? 

roberttdid:

40 + years, and not one, yup not one that I can find, demonstration by a cable vendor that definitively shows an audible difference, 

That's an awful lot of cable demo's to not be able to hear a difference. I get that you don't comprehend what I'm saying. But surely you can at least try and comprehend what you yourself have said? You're saying you cannot hear a difference. I believe you. I totally, totally believe you.

You know he lists his Linkedin profile as doing work for them? No doubt an exit strategy for him as he gets older, and an easy opportunity to increase margin and exposure for them. More power to them. I stopped feeling guilty about taking advantage of people wilfully uninformed ages ago.

You must have been participating in the snake oil screechers’ campaign against BJ Cables. When they decided to distribute the Iconoclast cables designed by Galen. This is why. 

Isn't Galen now doing work for Blue Jeans? ..... just sayin.

With the exception of the ground wire, I am going to go out on a limb and say that pretty much none (or very close to it), can even communicate why a larger gauge would be better for low power noise sensitive equipment like a phono-pre, a pre-amp, streamer, etc.

Better yet, what advantage would there be to "better", i.e. low inductance, low capacitance, power cords for these products at all?

Now present the exact same argument for a power amplifier that is not hitting its limits.

I mean all those people out there extolling the virtue of big gauge AC wire, fancy geometries for AC, etc. must know why it makes things better right? Right?

I just saw Elvis jogging.

And then he is having tea with Hitler and Michael Jackson.

I just saw Elvis jogging.

The famous Neil Armstrong quote, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” was the brainchild of Kubrick’s wife Christiane, while Kubrick was filming the Moon landing on the old set of 2001: A Space Odyssey. 👨‍🚀

Roberttdid
But hey, I seem to have triggered the rath (Sic) of the Pet Audio Rock dude, so I must be doing something right?

>>>>>Is your auto spell check function on the fritz or is that you? 🤗

NASA Challenger Astronauts are still alive.

I’m sticking to Discworld theory here.......

roberttdid

... we still have millions and millions of people who believe the Earth is flat ...

Got proof? Please keep in mind that most "flat-earthers" aren't serious at all. It's a goof. They do it in jest, in large part because it upsets some people like you.

Relax, nobody believes the Earth is flat. Nobody ever did, actually. Maybe a monkey.

And this is why we still have millions and millions of people who believe the Earth is flat, because the "measurements" don't line up with what they think they perceive.

Not if you care about accurate repeatable results. You have already jumped to the conclusion that you have hearing abilities that are not being measured. In the audiophile world, that rarely means you isolated the test to your hearing, and nothing else. Unfortunate, but true.

If one can't find any studies of measurements not lining up with hearing ability, the logical explanation is the measuring is not up to the level of one's hearing.

nonoise6,006 posts06-04-2020 3:48pm

If one can't find any studies of measurements not lining up with hearing ability, the logical explanation is the measuring is not up to the level of one's hearing.

Wouldn't you want to verify that "logical explanation" with some testing, rather than just jump to conclusions? Wouldn't that be particularly true if you couldn't find any test at all for the DUT, including those that produced a null result?

Roberttdid
But hey, I seem to have triggered the rath of the Pet Audio Rock dude, so I must be doing something right?

>>>>Watch it dude, I’ll be over you like ugly on an ape. 🦍 

If one can't find any studies of measurements not lining up with hearing ability, the logical explanation is the measuring is not up to the level of one's hearing.

It takes some real pretzel logic to say it's the other way around.

All the best,
Nonoise

roberttdid

40 + years, and not one, yup not one that I can find, demonstration by a cable vendor that definitively shows an audible difference...
40+ years, and not one vendor willing to put their money where their mouth is ...  40+ years, and still no proper blind demonstrations at a trade-show ...

So what? You are of course free to do your own testing. If you do, please share your results here.

Oh, I have tried many things as well, including recreating the effects of Pass and Polk (and no doubt many others) on amplifier stability, not to mention having access research grade acoustic lab environments, and trained and untrained biased and unbiased testers. Hence why I made the statement that wire can make an audible difference, and why I differentiate between crap, "good enough", and uber-expensive.

Still, many of us tried. Thin wire, thick wire, stranded wire, solid core wire, cheap wire, expensive wire, fancy plugs, bare wire, reversing the wires etc.

But hey, I seem to have triggered the rath of the Pet Audio Rock dude, so I must be doing something right?

You realize that in under 100 characters, you just admitted you have reading comprehension issues as I clearly stated that resistance, capacitance, inductive and stability issues could create audible differences in cables .....

You do realize you just admitted that in 40 years you have never been able to hear any difference between any cables.

roberttdid,

"40 + years, and not one, yup not one that I can find, demonstration by a cable vendor that definitively shows an audible difference, let alone an improvement between good wire (low resistance, reasonably low capacitance/inductance), and their uber-expensive wire.

40+ years, and not one vendor willing to put their money where their mouth is and show, in perfect for them conditions, that they can reliably pick out their uber expensive wire from run of the mill wire.

40+ years, and still no proper blind demonstrations at a trade-show that illustrates the clear, claimed "night and day" difference between their uber expensive cables and good cables (good resistance/capacitance/inductance, and shielding for interconnects)."


Yes, good work.

Can’t really see how it could be spelled out any clearer for those who hoping for cable upgrades.

If only it were that easy to upgrade your sound by swapping a few cables. If only.

Still, many of us tried. Thin wire, thick wire, stranded wire, solid core wire, cheap wire, expensive wire, fancy plugs, bare wire, reversing the wires etc.

I think the only thing I didn’t try was direct soldering onto the connectors, but I do remember someone writing that they had done that with their NAD 3020 integrated...

roberttdid— Thank you.