Too good a post to waste


On a thread that is a running example of the textual equivalent of nonstop cat videos. So here it is again.


I could understand the cables are snake-oil doubters and take them seriously- in 1980. Back then there was no internet, Stereo Review was pretty much it, and Julian Hirsch was the Oracle of all things audio. Stereo Review and Julian Hirsch said if it measures the same it sounds the same. Wire is wire, and that was that. 

Even then though J. Gordon Holt had already started the movement that was to become Stereophile. JGH took the opposing view that our listening experience is what counts. Its nice if you can measure it but if you can’t that’s your problem not ours. 

Stereo Review and the measurers owned the market back then. The market gave us amplifier wars, as manufacturers competed for ever more power with ever lower distortion. For years this went on, until one day "measures great sounds bad" became a thing.

Could be some here besides me lived through and remember this. If you did, and if you were reading JGH back then, I tip my hat to you, sir! I fell prey to Hirsch and his siren song that you can have it all for cheap and don’t really have to learn to listen. Talk about snake-oil! A lot of us bought into it. Sorry to say.

But anyway like I was saying it was easy to believe the lie back then because it was so prevalent and also because what wire there was that sounded better didn’t really sound a whole lot better.

Now though even budget wire sounds so much better than what comes off a reel you’d have to be deaf not to notice. Really good wires sound so good you’d notice even if you ARE deaf! No kidding. My aunt Bessie was deaf as a stone but she could FEEL the sound at a high enough volume, knew it was music. The dynamic punch of my CTS cables is so much greater than ordinary 14 ga wire I would bet my deaf from birth aunt Bessie could "hear" the difference. Certain so-called audiophiles here, I'm not so sure.

Oh and not done beating the dead horse quite yet, according to my calendar its 2020, a solid 40 years past 1980. Stereo Review is dead and buried. Stereophile lives on. A whole multi-billion dollar industry built on wire not being wire thrives. Maybe the measurement people can chalk up and quantify from that just how many years, and billions, they are out of date and in denial. 
128x128millercarbon
cdorval, I have one of those Panasonic nasal hair trimmer gadgets. Works great in your ears.
There is no reason to do double blind testing in audio comparisons. You don't even need to single blind as long as you are honest to yourself. Your not applying your "study" to other people in say a situation where you are effecting their health. You just want to know which of two items sounds better for yourself. You just need to be able to arrange it so that you can switch back and forth quickly between the items in question. I compare digital files to vinyl playback all the time by Q ing one format about 15 seconds ahead of the other then I can just switch back and forth. As always, those who think their audio memory for fine detail lasts more than 5 seconds are deluding themselves but they are free to do so in America at least for the time being.
And yet I know five times more than miller carbon. How is that even possible? It’s because they don’t teach that much in 4H. 🐄🍀
For all the hype of the expensive AC cables, it’s amazing what they do NOT list in the properties of the copper they use. OFC is the popular boast, but they don’t mention Ohno Continuous Cast or annealed forging to eliminate grain and the boundaries present in "cold" drawn wire which add noise and distortion. The brand I use to make AC cables offers cable made from these processes. I know I am using better copper than what is used in more expensive, completed cables. If they had grain-free copper in their cables, they would talk about it. Please tell me who does, and at what cost.  Use good plugs and Total Contact, which no big company uses, and you have a world-class AC cable for < $1K.