A fresh approach to cable analysis

So Seymour I asked Claude AI to provide the links to the tests you have been asking for. It was easy, you could have done this too if you were really interested. Here are the results:

Dave — known as raueda1 on another forum — just posted his thoughts in a way I wish I could have phrased myself. Enjoy.

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I think there’s a different angle here that hasn't been explored much and may be more useful than simply asking whether enough blind tests exist to resolve anything.

 

I’m happy to concede that the public record of rigorous cable blind tests is thinner than many people assume. There are some tests, some interesting attempts, and some suggestive failures, but apparently not some vast body of research that settles the question with sufficient rigor. So sure, one should be careful about overstating the literature. However, that raises what I think is the more interesting question: why is that the case?

 

If expensive cables produce identifiable, reliable, repeatable audible improvements, why hasn’t the cable industry funded and publicized proper independent testing? That would seem to be enormously valuable. A clean, well-run, preregistered blind test showing that trained listeners could reliably distinguish a high-end cable from a competent ordinary cable would be marketing gold. It would be cited endlessly. It would appear in ads, white papers, dealer literature, show demos, interviews, and manufacturer websites.

 

Yet that does not seem to have happened in any meaningful way, despite decades of claims, substantial money, passionate users, and manufacturers who would benefit directly from a positive result. That absence strikes me as meaningful. And it is not just the manufacturers. There is an entire cable-marketing ecosystem - cable companies, distributors, dealers, reviewers, magazines, forums, audio shows, YouTube channels, influencers, affiliate links, advertising relationships, and websites (including AS) built around the idea that these questions remain endlessly open but experientially discoverable.

 

That ecosystem benefits from cable belief. Cables are easy to ship, easy to demonstrate, easy to describe in poetic language, easy to swap, easy to photograph. I also assume that audiophile cables are highly profitable. Cables also create constant content: reviews, comparisons, shootouts, system-matching advice, “loom” discussions, break-in reports, dielectric explanations, geometry narratives, and upgrade paths. IOW, cable audibility is not merely a technical claim. It is also a commercial content engine.

 

I think that makes the absence of decisive testing even more interesting. If the claims are as strong as commonly presented, this entire ecosystem would seem to benefit enormously from a clean positive result. It would validate the products, validate the reviewers, validate the dealers, validate the publications, and reassure customers that their purchases are grounded in something more than subjective impressions.

 

A failed test, however, would be very damaging. It would not just threaten one product. It would threaten a recurring revenue stream and a lot of audiophile mythology. I've come to believe that the incentive structure actually runs the other way: keep the claims subjective, keep the comparisons sighted, keep the language experiential, and avoid tests that could collapse the ambiguity. None of that requires some kind of conspiracy, all it needs are very ordinary incentives. If sighted reviewing and subjective testimony already sells cables, why take the risk of a controlled test?

 

By contrast, I don’t find the absence of extensive academic research mysterious at all. Cable behavior is not exactly an unexplored frontier in electrical engineering. Resistance, capacitance, inductance, shielding, impedance, dielectric behavior, skin effect, connector resistance, source/load interaction, and transmission-line effects are mature subjects. And here is a great deal of real cable engineering in RF, telecom, instrumentation, aerospace, power transmission, medical systems, and data communications. But “do two competent, appropriately specified audio cables sound different in a domestic hi-fi system?” seems not to be a high-priority research question. Why would it be? The expected effect size is small, the commercial claims are often vague, the mechanisms are often underspecified, and the result would not add much to core electrical engineering knowledge.

 

So, I would distinguish two kinds of silence. The silence from academic science may simply mean: this is not a promising or important unresolved research problem. The silence from the cable-marketing ecosystem is different. That ecosystem is making, amplifying, reviewing, advertising, and monetizing the audibility claims. If the claims are robust, it has every incentive to demonstrate them.

 

None of this proves that no cable difference can ever be audible. I don’t think anyone needs to make that absolute claim. Obviously pathological cases exist - very long runs, unusual source or load impedances, bad shielding, poor terminations, high capacitance, oxidized connectors, inappropriate gauge etc. But that's a very different claim from the broad high-end cable narrative, where competent cables are said to produce large sonic differences in warmth, detail, space, timing, soundstage, liquidity, blacker backgrounds, and imaging.

 

And at the end of the day, if someone simply claims “I enjoy these cables,” that’s great. No laboratory, no data required. But that's very different for saying “these cables produce audible sonic improvements because of their design,” in which case the burden of evidence still sits with the claimant - and even more so with the industry and media ecosystem selling and promoting the claim. 

 

May the force be with us.  🪄

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And somebody answered and Dave was right at it...

The burden is actually on the person who wants to prove something, not anyone else.

Sorry, that distinction doesn't work. It's a logical fallacy and has a name:  shifting the burden of proof. Doing so reframes the issue incorrectly. In logic and argumentation, the burden attaches to the person making the claim, especially a positive claim. It does not attach merely to whoever asks for evidence.

 

If I say “this cable produces an audible improvement,” that is a positive claim about the world. The burden sits with me, or with the people selling or promoting that claim. If someone else says “I am not convinced that has been demonstrated,” they have not assumed an equal burden to disprove it. They are simply declining to accept the claim until adequate evidence is provided.

 

Otherwise any unsubstantiated claim becomes insulated by apathy. A person could claim that a fuse, cable riser, demagnetizer, stone, sticker, or magic dot improves sound, and then say: “Well, the burden is on skeptics because they are the ones who want proof.” That can't be right. The claim does not become evidentially neutral just because the claimant does not care to prove it.

 

I agree that nobody is required to prove anything in order to enjoy a hobby. If someone says, “I like this cable,” or “I enjoy what it does in my system,” that is enough. No burden. No laboratory required. But if the statement is presented as a factual audibility claim — “this cable sounds better because of its design” — then the evidence burden sits with the claimant, especially when the claim is used commercially. That's the important distinction. The person wanting proof may be motivated to run a test. But the person making the claim is still the one whose claim remains unsupported if no good evidence is produced.

-Dave

One thing about the Great Cable Debate, there is never anything new. Another thing is that we've reached a point at which its just a game of shirts and skins, two dogmatic, entrenched positions.

I've invested a fair amount-likely more than wise, in cables. I bought what I have now because I perceived an incremental improvement over what I had before. Not "night and day" but incremental and it was worth it to me. Could part of my perception be based on expectation bias? Of course it could. Expectation bias is a real thing, firmly established, and part of the human condition. Could it be that cables matter in ways that can't be measured? I think that's a possibility, but an unproven one.

So, my system will tell you I'm certainly not a cable denier, but I'm open minded enough to understand some of the points on the other side. I don't think we sound very smart to dismiss the likes of Dr. Floyd Toole who, I believe, stated that the idea that expensive cables enhance performance is nonsense. I suspect that Dr. Toole has had access to plenty revealing systems in his work. That doesn't mean we must agree with him, but to make the unverifiable assertion that anyone who doesn't hear these big differences in cables must have a substandard system or substandard hearing doesn't do much credit to our side. 

There have been blind tests, we can argue about whether they are "properly conducted." What has always bothered me is that if the high end cable vendors are dead sure their cables make a big improvement, they have more incentive than anyone to conduct rigorous, juried blind testing, put it on video and publish the results. If Nordhost or Transparent or my manufacturer, Schnerzinger, did that and the results showed that folks in a blind test under conditions the manufacturers and independent experts deemed appropriate could hear big improvements in their cables over less expensive wire, well, the first one to do that would reap a commercial bonanza. And they have the means to conduct such testing. Yet, they don't conduct those tests and as someone who has invested in their products I'm bothered by that because I can only think of one compelling reason why they wouldn't.

So, I don't see this as clearly as almost everyone else on either side. Because I do perceive a difference. Maybe its "real." Maybe imagined or the product of expectation bias. For me, it was worth the money and if you want to think the money was wasted, I'm in no way offended by that because first, its my money and my choice, second, I'm not seeking anyone's affirmation of my decisions-its a hobby for goodness sake, not life or death, and third, I've been wrong before. My ego is not all that invested about being right concerning a piece of wire.

The good news is, we can all spend our money in whatever manner makes us happy.  The anger generated by this debate is fascinating, predictable and pointless. Do what makes you happy and be happy. Let everyone else row their own boat. 

Shallow thoughts.

@gdaddy1 

@seymour-krelborn  Did you take the test?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSZwGQS0vLw