Cable Snake Oil Antidote

@geoffkait 

Exactly! 

" Well, that pretty much sums up the 40 year old cable debate in a nutshell. Here’s some advice for anyone with such extreme angst and heartburn - get Better Business Bureau or Consumer Report on the case and see how far you get. "

Better idea - do some research on the people who own/run high end cable "manufacturing" businesses and find out what their professional qualifications are. You are likely to find a lot of people with sales, marketing, and business administration backgrounds and very few professionally trained engineers willing to stake their reputations on audible improvements that can't somehow be measured but can easily be heard.

We have microphones that can detect sound pressure signals that are much weaker than humans can hear at frequencies much higher and much lower than humans can hear. We have essentially free software that can run on laptops that can reliably record everything these microphones pick up - phase, amplitude, and frequency. If it can't be measured, it can't be heard. Any claims to the contrary are bupkiss and easily debunked if the claimant has the guts to submit to double blind testing - WHICH THEY NEVER DO!

It is counter intuitive that electrical energy in a series of electronics and cables could be immune from changes in LCR. Given loudspeakers with sufficient resolution, the changes should be apparent. However, just as some are colorblind and others tone deaf, some will not have the ability to discern subtle differences.

They could have stopped right there, at the 3rd paragraph, and then you wouldn't have something like this:

Yup. Poorly designed and poorly matched gear will be affected audibly by the slight impedance of a cable. High fidelity gear will not.

being a take away from the article. The article is littered with statements like:

A cable's performance is system dependent. An arguably better cable could make a system less pleasant if it exposes existing flaws. 

Note "could" and "if". It's not an absolute.

Whether these changes enhance or detract is completely system dependent! What works well in one system may not in another.

The only true way to know if a cable is better is to try it in YOUR system.

These examples are for illustration ONLY and are not intended for any other purpose.

(Note the illustrations were meant to show that carefully chosen wire construction can be made to sound closely the same)

Some claim all cables sound the same. Some claim two cables with the same R will sound the same. Some cable manufacturers make all kinds of wild claims, provide no engineering insight as to problems solved and charge ever increasing prices for something that may not be any better than, or even different from, what the customer is currently using as cables interact with the system!

Caveat emptor.

So in the end, two well made cables can sound different, taking the price gouging out of the equation, which was a needless caveat.

With apologies to Thomas Dolby: "They blinded me with science...."

All the best,
Nonoise

Whoa! What?! Double Blind Testing! I did not see that coming! 👀 Run away! Run away! 

🐑 🐑 🐑 🐑 🐑

@shadorne  

Poorly designed and poorly matched gear will be affected audibly by the slight impedance of a cable. High fidelity gear will not.

Only AFTER they repeal the laws of physics. The better the gear, the easier it is to 'hear' cables as masking defects have been removed.

@geoffkait 

It’s strictly an old pseudo skeptic

I'm not a skeptic. I've been able to reliably detect cable & component differences for almost half a century. I built electronics for the recording industry. In doing so, we evaluated transistors, ICs, resistors, capacitors, wire, PCB fabs, connectors, circuit symmetry, SMT vs PTH, ground schemes, signal routing, etc. Some had measureable differences with the equipment we possessed, some only audible.

argument to claim “cable manufacturers make all kinds of wild claims.” Especially when no examples of such wild claims are presented by the pseudo skeptic

It would be unfair to single out some manufacturers as their cables could be very good in some systems in spite of their pseudo-science double-speak. The intent is for people to do their homework and listen for themselves, ignoring internet blowhards without an iota of technical expertise or any test data to back up their claims.

Justifying wild claims because HiFi is a hobby is ludicrous. HiFi is a business and some manufacturers are charlatans.

Amended to "Some cable manufacturers make all kinds of wild claims" My apologies.

Coffee is a bad analogy as it is an organic product. It varies from day to day, degrading from the instant it dropped from the roaster. HiFi also varies from day to day, but the trajectory is not always downward.

Coffee Rule of Fifteens:
Green coffee is good for 15 months.
Roast coffee is good for 15 days.
Ground coffee is good for 15 minutes.