You know, what I suggest is you try shielded and unshielded power cables. Make some yourself, inexpensively. Find the Parts Connexion.
See if you find a difference.
I suggest using
See if you find a difference.
I suggest using
How I would measure cables
Hi everyone,
There’s been a lot of talk about "science" and cables. To me it sounds a lot like free energy, and cold fusion scams. With few exceptions, they invoke a lot of physics, without ever tying it back down to actual results. Fancy words, and lots of them.
In the fusion/energy camps this has become so common that they use a very simple method to find fraud. Like the discovery of the Enron scam, we have learned to compare input to output. Enron was first discovered to be a fraud by simply looking at the income and comparing it to claimed money generated. And oh how they howled that we just didn’t understand the business model.
So, with perpetual motion, fusion, dark matter conversion generators, and what have you, they have a simple test. Compare energy in versus energy out over time. The funny thing is, if any of these things actually worked, you’d think they’d make money by selling energy, but they don’t, they make money by getting you to invest or buy their equipment.
Anyway, point is, we live at a time where 96kHz/32 bit AD converters are common place, and commonly used in signal testing and analysis. If _ANY_ cable actually was worth high prices it would be super simple to test the output. For instance, record the signal at the speaker terminals for an entire performance you believe shows how good cable A vs. cable B is. Then go in and locate the difference. Perhaps it is frequency, perhaps timing, perhaps amplitude. It’s a lot of data for the 1970s, but all this would fit on anyone’s laptop now and be relatively easy to analyze.
I don’t have the time or energy to do this, anymore than I have the time to measure the power of the latest perpetual motion gizmo, however, this is affordable and practical for most manufacturers to accomplish. That none have done this, except a little done by Analysis Plus (with severe constraints) is why I will always remain somewhat with the skeptics and the "that’s way too expensive for a cable" camp.
So my point is, if you make cables you think do something cool, and worthwhile, I encourage you to undertake this type of basic research, maybe even define how testing should be done so others can follow and we can compare. For the rest of the world, I strongly encourage skepticism and to ask yourself repeatedly if what you are hearing really is worth the cost, or whether the same amount of money is better spent on a vacation.
If you want things which are clearly better than cables, room acoustic treatments by far are much easier to hear, prove they work, and end up with reliably great results.
Best,
E
There’s been a lot of talk about "science" and cables. To me it sounds a lot like free energy, and cold fusion scams. With few exceptions, they invoke a lot of physics, without ever tying it back down to actual results. Fancy words, and lots of them.
In the fusion/energy camps this has become so common that they use a very simple method to find fraud. Like the discovery of the Enron scam, we have learned to compare input to output. Enron was first discovered to be a fraud by simply looking at the income and comparing it to claimed money generated. And oh how they howled that we just didn’t understand the business model.
So, with perpetual motion, fusion, dark matter conversion generators, and what have you, they have a simple test. Compare energy in versus energy out over time. The funny thing is, if any of these things actually worked, you’d think they’d make money by selling energy, but they don’t, they make money by getting you to invest or buy their equipment.
Anyway, point is, we live at a time where 96kHz/32 bit AD converters are common place, and commonly used in signal testing and analysis. If _ANY_ cable actually was worth high prices it would be super simple to test the output. For instance, record the signal at the speaker terminals for an entire performance you believe shows how good cable A vs. cable B is. Then go in and locate the difference. Perhaps it is frequency, perhaps timing, perhaps amplitude. It’s a lot of data for the 1970s, but all this would fit on anyone’s laptop now and be relatively easy to analyze.
I don’t have the time or energy to do this, anymore than I have the time to measure the power of the latest perpetual motion gizmo, however, this is affordable and practical for most manufacturers to accomplish. That none have done this, except a little done by Analysis Plus (with severe constraints) is why I will always remain somewhat with the skeptics and the "that’s way too expensive for a cable" camp.
So my point is, if you make cables you think do something cool, and worthwhile, I encourage you to undertake this type of basic research, maybe even define how testing should be done so others can follow and we can compare. For the rest of the world, I strongly encourage skepticism and to ask yourself repeatedly if what you are hearing really is worth the cost, or whether the same amount of money is better spent on a vacation.
If you want things which are clearly better than cables, room acoustic treatments by far are much easier to hear, prove they work, and end up with reliably great results.
Best,
E
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- 32 posts total
Power cables oddly are probably the easiest to measure, since you can do a lot of it with a regular DVM. Speaker cables and interconnects are harder, but I have a suggestion: rather than try to measure the cable itself, measure its effects on your system. Place a microphone at the listening position and do a 20-20KHz sweep. Record the actual frequency response and distortion across the band. Then make the cable change and do the test again. A customer of mine did this for filter capacitor changes and was able to show that an improved filter capacitor resulted in lower distortion in his listening room. Some cables **seem** like they help certain systems play bass better; if that is really true you should be able to measure the results. A lot of software is available that might allow you to do most of this using your laptop in the listening position. |
Another pointless discussion from the people who yell "PROVE IT TO ME" all over the Internets, with no desire whatsoever to try for themselves. Of course said people would dismiss anybody sharing their experience of ownership and usage as placebo, psychoacoustics, and such, but nothing replaces EXPERIENCE, even some measurements made with a questionable tool (i.e. Null Taster of the famous Ethan Winer). And yet, if you searched a bit, you will find plenty of info from cable manufacturers showing the rationale behind their product. Example: https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/rcl-part-1/ https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/rcl-part-2-roger-skoff-cables/ |
Speaker cables and interconnects are harder, but I have a suggestion: rather than try to measure the cable itself, measure its effects on your system. I think both can be measured the same way, and speaker terminals are the least room dependent. :) That's my idea though. We can do both steady state measurements of power cords, as well as measure the playback of an entire musical track. This actually gets us to the gathering data portion of the work. After this, we need to go hunting for clues about differences. That's a lot of data to sort through, but with some programming skill, straightforward to automate. You want to know what effect a power cable ultimately has on your system? Sure. Change cords, and see how the speaker outputs change, if at all. Same for power conditioners, etc. It would probably be useful to develop a suite of analysis steps to compare phase, amplitude, frequency and total output routinely. It could be very instructive, and lead to completely new ways of evaluating gear. |
- 32 posts total