It reminds me of the old days, when kids would come into the shop saying that they got an XYZ amplifier for $100, and it sounds as good as any other amp because it had only .00000001% distortion, and no other amp could possibly sound better than that.
Some things never change. |
I would caution that assuming that "because the human being is subject to suggestion, and can be fooled", does not equate to "the human being is always fooled by suggestion".
Simply because something CAN happen, doesn't mean that it IS happening in any particular case.
If someone hears some differences in products, it is certainly just as much of a possibility(or more so) that it is happening, as if it is not happening.
Relegating every unproven statement to the "junk bin" just because it hasn't undergone a battery of tests, is not scientific either. All scientific hypotheses come from observations, which then leads to testing. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes not. And sometimes the testing regimen is not correctly applied, or insufficient to determine the truth.
It is incorrect to state that there are no differences in audio products because of similarity of outcome in simple measurement protocols. It is well known that the measurement protocols for audio equipment are woefully inadequate and incomplete, and this is admitted and known even(or mostly) by the people who do this testing.
Similarly, with double-blind A/B testing, there are known inconsistencies, and the outcomes are determined statistically and never called "absolute", but are always qualified by statements such as "in this test, things tended to come out this way". And all these tests are clearly subject to at least as many "psycological issues" as the ones they claim to be testing.
To me, the interesting thing continues to be why the ear of the listener, his pleasure or displeasure, in the environment he uses, is considered to be the only measurement that is not "accepted" as valuable by the "scientific community", when ultimately it is the only measure that is important to the listener. It seems that some feel that the listener's pleasure should be eliminated from the criteria for buying a product, and that he should buy strictly on test results alone.
Truthfully, I don't understand the point of trying to argue and convince a listener that he doesn't hear what he thinks(knows) he hears. What is the benefit of it? If you do convince the person, and he goes out and buys the cheaper gear that you convinced him should sound as good(based on extremely rudimentary tests and alot of speculation), and it doesn't(and likely will not), then what have you done for him? Conversely, a person should not try to convince someone to buy an expensive product if the rest of his system isn't up to supporting the performance level of that product, because it won't pay off that way. In any case, I expect that the listener will use the available methods to audition the products before they buy, and utilize any 30-day money-back guarantees of satisfaction, to safeguard their investments. By doing this, there is very little financial risk(perhaps some shipping costs), and the user can determine for himself what he prefers for his system. This is what most people do, as far as I know, so what is the big deal?
Just because a person doesn't know everything about everything does not reflect on their intelligence level. It reflects their experience level on a given subject, and possibly some insight. The dangerous part comes in when a person thinks that they know everything, to the exclusion of being reasonable enough to think that there are some things that they personally do not understand, so they attribute them to "psychological effects", and make no further attempt to understand or learn, but simply dismiss to the easiest available rationalization. This is where learning ceases, and dogma abounds. |
I'd suggest this approach.
Amongst the audiophile community, there is a very significant statistical majority that there are audible differences in cables. These are people who have done all kinds of listening tests in their home environments, and many would have preferred to not spend any unnecessary money.
These differences are statistically significant enough to comprise a valid observed phenomenon, over a disparate group of individuals.
Now, the scientific response should be that since existing electrical testing methodology has only shown minor differences,and that A/B/X testing has not determined anything sufficient, that there must be some other testing methodology found to either support or refute this widespread observation.
Case in point: When optical communications networks are used, fiber-optic cables carry the signals. Electricity is applied to one driver, and comes out the other end's receiver as electricity(of course opto-couplers are used in this case, but bear me out). If I took that fiber-optic cable and tested it for electrical characteristics, it would seem that it wouldn't even carry any electricity, and it won't. But that doesn't mean that signals are not carried on it. You have to design your testing protocol to measure what you are trying to determine. When we add in the opto-couplers and know(ahead of time) that we are transmitting light signals with couplers on both ends, then we can measure the performance adequately. Similarly, we don't really know for sure(and this whole thread bears this out) what we are trying to measure. All we know is that the existing measuring techniques are apparently not adequate to account for a statistically significant and widespread observation.
So, one way to deal with it, is to just "dismiss" it as folly, or imagination. The other way is to figure out why the tests are inadequate, and determine new tests that actually can make some headway to finding out how to measure what is so commonly observed. The first step in this is to try to determine what the cables are doing that is not in our testing.
If every scientist dismissed everything that could not be readily measured at the time, we wouldn't know anything at all. Measurements are made to quantify observed phenomenon. Anything that is a statistically significant occurrence, justifies further investigation to find tests that can quantify it, whether they be electrical tests or acoustic tests, or whatever.
Something is going on here with these cables, and it would behoove us to find out what it is, and why it is. |
On another thread, member Aball mentioned that the French and German governments are collaborating on a research project to find out why there are differences between what is currently measured, and what is heard.
Apparently, according to what Aball read, there is some kind of micro-corona effect around wires, which interacts with the surrounding atmosphere or dielectric, causing ionization effects, that they have discovered. He reports that this effect differs with varying applications. This collaboration has evidently produced a " measuring box", which can measure this in some way.
It is interesting to see that efforts are underway to explain this phenomenon. |
Look, even though everything has not been determined yet(maybe), there are definititely at least SOME measurable differences in some cables(resistance, capacitance, inductance, dielectric, shielding) which HAVE been PROVEN to have effects on the sound of cables. Scientifically measurable, known, and quantified.
Now, maybe some might say that this is not sufficient, and I'd be one of them, because I think that there is more to it, yet undiscovered. But, at least this data IS available, and it DOES account for some sonic differences in cables.
So the argument that there are no differences is FALSE.
Now we get to the part about "Can we hear the differences between an expensive cable and a cheap cable?" This depends upon the system and the individual listening.
In the other thread, where A/B/X testing was used, there was at least one person scoring 80%. And this was in a test with acknowledged flaws. This shows that even under duress, and poor test conditions, with short listening times, SOME PEOPLE CAN tell the differences.
I'm sorry for the ones who can't. But at least they can buy the cheap stuff and be happy. |
I'm willing to be a participant.
But really, most "cable believers" think that testing to prove something that is easily seen to be self-evident to be a waste of time.
We don't need a test to prove that the sun comes up in the morning. Only the disbelievers need the test.
However, it someone puts something together, and can get me to the location, I'll put my money where my mouth is.
I've done this before, and I have no worries about doing it again. |
El, bad analogy.
Cable believers don't think that they make it happen.
It's the cable disbelievers who think that the believers make it happen(via self delusion).
Essentially, for the first time on this thread, I agree with Rsbeck.
People are going to believe what they believe.
Some people will act based on what they experience, and some people will doubt their experiences, and act contrary to them, because they would rather believe what others tell them they should believe.
If we relied strictly on numbers, like is suggested by some on this thread, then we'd all be listening to old Pioneer receivers from the 70's, which had "perfect" distortion numbers, but sounded like hell. These same kinds of people who are anti-cable today, were yelling to the rooftops that we were wasting our money on audiophile equipment, because any cheap receiver "measured perfect", and spending anything more was foolish. It was only the audiophiles who persisted in pointing out that some audiophile equipment sounded better and measured worse. The "measurement people" then fell back on the same argument, about it being "all in your head". Remember that? Well, after a couple years of this same kind of argument happening today about cables, it was found that designing for ultra-low distortion into a static load ruined the sound in real life applications. I'd say that this is about the same situation.
Science eventually "caught on" to what was happening in the "distortion numbers race", and realized that their testing was flawed, and that it actually led to the reduction of performance level in real world applications. It took awhile, but some people never really accepted that science was wrong(incomplete). They still listen to that crap from the 70's, thinking it is "perfect".
I think that this is like a movie, "Revenge of the Bench Testers". Where the plot consists of disgruntled bench testers(and their minions) who were embarrassed by their failures in the late 70's, coming back to destroy the audio world by planting seeds of self-doubt into the audiophile community who embarrassed them 25 years ago. Mwuuhuuuhahahaha!!
Don't worry. We found that they are not invincible, and last time all we had to do was disconnect their feedback loops, and they went back to their benches. :^) |
