http://www.machinadynamica.com/machina41.htm



May I say that this impressed me quite a bit, but not in any positive sense whatsoever?

It reads like a send-up, but it appears to be available for purchase for real.

(I think this is the right forum, in some senses this topic ought to start down in the Recycle Bin)

"...based on concepts and products originally developed by PWB Electronics, England." For the uninitiated, PWB is the monogram for Peter Belt. You can read Peter Belt's FAQ here:

http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/faq/faq82000.html

The idea of a clock affecting audio performance is not original. You can read Stereophile's review of George Tice's clock here:

http://www.stereophile.com//accessoryreviews/784/index1.html

Stereophile, instead of calling a spade a spade, prefers to remain "skeptically open-minded."

ff123

I followed the link to the site and read the reviews. You know, if those folks who buy the clocks are happier and hear things more clearly, good for them.

I Have a Timex digital clock that has makes selectable animal noises (elephants, tigers, et cetera) when the alarm goes off, I wonder if putting it next to my Bose speakears will improve the musicality... Most probably not because it's not a "Machina Dynamica Clever Little Clock" and it didn't cost $149, altho a tiger as an alarm is quite effective.

With bose, everything is possible, as long as the drivers are compatible with....... no wait, i'm mixing up bose and creative labs, sorry.

I didn't realize this when Head-Fi had a stupendously long (and interesting) discussion on Rainbow Foil - another one of Peter Belt's innovations - but PWB is apparantly a man of legendary controversy even in the audiophile community. He's been at this for at least 20 years, and even a lot of subjectivists don't trust him. Even many Audio Asylum regulars rag on him.

Are there any depths these people aren't prepared to plumb? It beggars belief that people can be so gullible, but if they are I can have only limited sympathy, they almost deserve it!

The people which are to be saved are not those who already went through the door or prefered to stay outside, but those who haven't choosen yet.

As they say: Beliefs are stronger than the truth, because beliefs can exist on their own. And it almost always is a waste of energy to try to "convert" people who dont want to be converted. With the amount of energy you spent on trying to convert one of those fools or get angry about him/her, you could have helped 4 others who are open for new ideas or even are requesting more info about it.

Thus, i propose to abandon the sheeps and focus on improving things for those who actually want it. And if it is the case that you feel fatigued from reading the same questions over and over, then either selectively pick those who seem promising, or instead add the repetitive info to the wiki.

Yes, i know i'm an elitist, lol.
- Lyx

Sometimes that is the only way.

beautifully done couldn't have said it better myself.

Well, expensive cables aren't necessarily bad. You're rarely going to get poorer performance from expensive cables. They're likely made with tighter tolerances and things, improving the physical connection between components. However, buying expensive cables isn't likely to improve a poor-sounding system. It probably will have a negligible impact on sound quality.

It is not unknown for some cable manufacturers to either build their cables out of highly capacitive components, or (in the most egregious of cases) physically insert an RLC network in the cable. These cables measure well out of transparency and may possible cause HF rolloff or amplifier oscillation under certain circumstances (that are likely to be more common with audiophile gear).

Wow. That stereophile article was enlightening, to say the least. I honestly did not truly understand how people can embrace ignorance.

My favorite line:

Why in the hell not? If the thing doesn't make sense, then it's quite likely that it's bullshit and worth discounting.

I am absolutely shocked that grown men could be so gullible.

Umm... you've heard about that stuff they call religion, haven't you?
They killed some guy 2000 years ago and he got all alive again & if you fly a plane into a building you'll get to have 42 virgins to yourself and so on. No sillier than this clock... and much less dangerous to believe

Being frank beats being politically correct any given day. I was thinking something along the same lines.

But wait a second. Religion is tolerated because it is supposed to be about understanding. Maybe we don't understand and get to appreciate all aspects of the unique connection between someone's equipment and himself. That's why all this bigotry in HA

Yeah, but there's a difference between paying some religion lip service and actual religious fanaticism. I am of the opinion that most "religious" people don't really believe in what they profess to believe in. Mainly because theirs actions usually don't agree with their words.

Lying to oneself is very easy, after all.

Otto42 Yesterday, 11:59 PM Post #13


>>>>"""""......QUOTE(ff123 @ Sep 30 2005, 05:07 PM)

"...based on concepts and products originally developed by PWB Electronics, England." For the uninitiated, PWB is the monogram for Peter Belt. You can read Peter Belt's FAQ here:

http://www.belt.demon.co.uk/faq/faq82000.html

The idea of a clock affecting audio performance is not original. You can read Stereophile's review of George Tice's clock here:

http://www.stereophile.com//accessoryreviews/784/index1.html

Stereophile, instead of calling a spade a spade, prefers to remain "skeptically open-minded."


Wow. That stereophile article was enlightening, to say the least. I honestly did not truly understand how people can embrace ignorance.

My favorite line:

QUOTE
I would never discount a product merely because I don't accept the explanation offered for its operation.

Why in the hell not? If the thing doesn't make sense, then it's quite likely that it's bullshit and worth discounting.

I am absolutely shocked that grown men could be so gullible........."""

______________________________
______________________________



_____WaveFilers RESPONSE= When I read the first link of this thead, I thought for sure it was a gag page by a member of HA having some fun.

Then ....."What the !!......" /// ^ ? ^ \\\



However, the Stereophile writers ended his review with this>>

>>> """...... Now stop complaining that we never review anything from Radio Shack.---—Thomas J. Norton....."""


So I can assume he didn't "Buy the review unit" himself !!


HOWEVER,
Getting moderately more serious now,

I will also gladly OWN stereophiles statement and editorial test policy very easily that>>>


>> """....."QUOTE
I would never discount a product merely because I don't accept the explanation offered for its operation.......""



Under what condition would I not discount a product for this parameter?

1---------If an audio unit or cable sounded fantastic to me.



I think I've got my priority's straight. I'm looking for improved sound, and find that always going thru life DISPROVING the existence of improved sound to be a messy waste of my energy.

The universe is remarkably undefinable by monkeys in the end. If my Radio Shack Clock radio (The generic brand of this Peter Belt designed Clock) makes the sound better, bring it on.

HOWEVER, Tempering this goal with the precisely measured depth of my financial pockets is NOT a waste of energy !!


It's been my subjective experience that at least half of the people who claim that "Audio cables don't make any difference" decided this without ever turning their stereo on. They often learned their surprising conclusions from somebody else, and liked how certain it feels to have their beliefs all figured out.


They are lost in particle physics (or some such obsession....???) , and can't seem to trust their own ears, instincts and senses.


OR

1----------They have tenaciously latched onto a singular intellectual aspect
of cable design, usually surrouding electrical science, or some festering piece of physics knowledge, then means to them "It can't possibly improve the sound"

EG= "My superstition is better than your superstition !!"


In accordance with the PRIME DIRECTIVE HA TOS # 8 >>>

Trying to "prove" anything about cables for practical applications, is VERY hard, and I am trying to be sensitive to the majority's desire on the HA formu, to not get into the circular logic inherent in this topic.


My point just now, is that scientific progress has been hindered in the past by ENGINEERING Circular logic, just as much as superstition, and total ignorance of the scientific method.


JUST ONE EXAMPLE= For decades, most "audiophile" Speaker cable designs concentrated quite a bit on creating a low capacitance measurement. Presumably to prevent upper bandwidth roll-off in longer runs. In simple practical terms, a common speaker wire from the 1950's starts to loose treble at the speaker if the run is really long, like from one end of a living room to the other, or in LIVE sound, with 100's of feet of speaker wire being utilized.

I'm new to the Forum here (and might be falling on the sword of folly already!! ) but I just query-ed up this excellent treatment of high frequency losses in regards to loudspeaker wire length from this HA thread>>

HERE= Tigre says=

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....topic=20864&hl=



In the "golden Age" of D.I.Y. audio, many even seperated the positive and negetive leads of each individual speakers runs, to keep the capacitance as low as possible.

DISCLAIMER= If this older technique works effectively for you, "praise the lord and pass the LP, I'll put it on the platter immediately.."


Unfortunately, separating the plus and minus speaker leads like this tends to result in a higher inductance measurement. But twisting the two leads tightly together lowers the Inductance, and we have this very colorful fellow name Nicola Tesla to thank for discovering that one.


But low inductance was of no concern to most prominant designers all the way thru the 1960's. There seems to be a lot of data indicating CURMUDGEON-ISM at work sefely scewing the conclusions.......

Yet put a square wave thru a low inductance cable, and look at it on an O-- scope.

"MMMmm....The leading edge of the wave, ain't all round like before....??".

Distortion of leading edge transients in particular are less compromised when the inductance is lowered.


If you put flat foil conductor leads just mm apart in a sandwich, then you get a wire that is a remarkably neutral load between amp and speaker.


There are numerous other benefits, (such as superb RF rejection from tremendous amounts of CMR (Common Mode rejection) {thanks again Mr Tesla} but I'm mostly discussing this one electrical aspect, to illustrate how obsession with ONE spec, can lead to designs errors putting us all in "The dark" for immense amounts of time.


Just think for a moment= This is all mostly just OHMS LAW, and Tesla's fundamentals being fully realized, 50 years late in our audio tool basic element, the hookup wire. What a waste.........


Two major audio cable makers (that I chose here mostly because they can provide actual measurements to back their claims) latched onto these new realizations in the late 1970;s ---- KIMBER KABLE, and Alpha Core GOERTZ.

Alpha Core's day job, is wiring up commercial and military Aircraft.


Goertz MI 2: 10 AWG OFC Copper 750 x .010"
Dialectic= Teflon/ Polyester Terepthalate/ Polycarbonate 0.8 x 0.04"
Resistance 0.0022 ohms/ft
Inductance= 6nH/ft ----------- note that's NANO Henrys !
Impedance ~ 2.5 ohms
Capacitance. 0.95nF/ft

If you explore this link, be sure to go scroll down past the "hype", and see the SCOPE READOUT, and tech justifications

ALPHA--CORE
http://www.alphacore.com/mispeaker.html



KIMBER KABLE uses an intertwining braid rather than a foil sandwich. This is theoretically worse, from the tendancy to propagate "Strand microphony".compared to flat foil, ....but I like how it makes my clock radio keep better time anyway.


Their Teflon sheathed speaker cable 8-TC is used as a theoretical reference point by AES. I've observed it in active use in an audio evaluation test facility at Microsoft. It's been my own reference point for 10 years as well. (maybe a "plug", but I've used it in proffessional recording, and thus, is hopefully not seen as pure heresy...HEY, ....AES is pretty official....right???)


Basic Electrical Specifications
DUT: 8TC 2.5m bare wire ends.

(Cp) parallel capacitance 821.0 pF @ 20 kHz
• (Ls) series inductance: 0.345 H @ 20 kHz
• (Rdc) dc loop resistance: 0.018 Ohms
• (Xt) total reactance: 0.044 Ohms @ 20 kHz
• Frequency response ± 0.5 dB dc - 300 kHz

KIMBER CABLE=
http://www.kimber.com/Products/LoudSpeaker...C/8TC_Spec.aspx


CONDENSED SUBJECTIVE DATA= It's ironic, but on paper, these two cables specs look impressive. But it's both companys line level interconnects that have tested better in actual use for my recording studio purposes. Once again, the eyes and brain led me astray, and then I turned the stereo on, and discovered evidence closer to the truth I sought. Typically, unbalanced line level signals rarely change there basic electrical measurements between different common types.


But DISCLAIMER= "Your mileage will most certainly vary", and all audio equipment reacts different to different wire specs. It changes the LOAD, so it measures different, and amps and speakers are ALL designed and spec'd differently.


Think about that= Every single different interconnect measures electrically different. Every single speaker and amplifier handles the load differently.


THUS, for the life of me, I can't understand why anybody would believe any results from a strict A/B==X type test regiment for WIRE evaluation. How do I A/B---x two totally different Electrical LOADS from each other?

A'B--Xing cable seems to usually just prove that monkeys have fallable perception.

Or make the monkeys all hopping mad on a very scientifically focussed online forum.



Clearly to me, as effective, no, as TREMENDOUSLY EFFECTIVE as A/B--X testing has been on HA for CODEC evaluation, we need a fundamentally different test protocol entirely, for WIRE evaluation.


I'm not sure I'm up to this task,........but wish to try, over a long period of time, because awesome audio cable makes me feel all squishy inside. And I'm tired of all my smart and annoyingly hard to sway freinds not joining me in this joy of the perfect interface technology........... and so I invite all audio listeners with no "AudioPhelia Nervosa" medical issues to join me in trying to ----quantify---a test protocol for this MF'er.


Well, did I violate PRIME DIRECTIVE HA--TOS # 8 here? Sincerely, please let me know this, if I did. And in particular, what other methods I can utilize to discuss such theoretical scientific concepts of wire design and implimentation responsibly.


This is NOT the audioAsylum.com.



It is SOooooeasy to miss the forest for the trees. Or compare apples and oranges to Hambergers, without tasting any of the fruit, when you realize that you are actually a breatharian at heart.


BEWARE my fine sceptical friends, because both the physiological disorders present in ALL Cable evaluation >>>


---CRUMUDGIONISM
and
---AUDIOPHELIA NERVOSA

are just as silly to watch occuring as superstition gone wild. ...........

I don't know if you are merely a very verbose troll or just somebody who feels the need to share their stream-of-consciousness ramblings with others on the internet in a futile attempt to communicate, but I do feel that you would have a more productive time getting your views across if they were written and formatted in a more conventional manner.

If you are a troll, and I can't follow your argument well enough to tell whether you are, please do not feel the need to share your views with the Hydrogenaudio community in future.

Why?, a few paragraphs before you said that people don't trust their ears.

I'm sorry cabbagerat, the quote you pulled from my post is very troll like. And the formatting is not very productive. I'm used to cutitng and pasting text, but have discovered the forums QUOTE Button. And I need to focus better here.

Let me attempt the reframe my premise in a readers digest version, and then go from their. >>


The name of this thread is "I thought expensive cables were bad."


A LINK about a magical time piece that is preported to enchance audio without any direct connection to ones audio equipment was introduced in the first post. We all laughed about it. Certainly difficult to prove or conclude anything about it !


Then I responded with words to the effect of= , "Expensive cables are bad because they are expensive. And many cables are indeed bad. But if they actually sound good, then HA forum members should not be afraid of finding out this might be true "

I'm sorry. this was a troll like statement. Apologies. I'm fleeing the AudioAsylum forum, and I guess I haven't recovered quite yet.


It is my understanding that this is not a subjective opinion audio forum. Instead, all claims of technologys worthyness are to be supported with more than just conjecture. and wire electrical measurements may be helpful, but are not going to be enough. I wish to participate.


So far almost all dismissing of bad cables I can find on any of these postings here doesn't use very much scientific data to back up it's claims that any particular cables are bad. That's a gross generalization, but the codec testng area definately does back up ALL it's claims very rigorously.

I'm trying to determine how to accomplish less subjective results that have some value, but somehow, not come up against the common pitfalls of analog and digital cable evaluation. That damn Circular logic.....


As a start in my post,
I tried to support my claim of good cable sound with some measurement results of these 2 cables, and I sited my sources. And then, some opinions about why I think these measurements make them signifigant. And I believe the charactoristic of their very low inductance is a valuable specification to pursue. It was verbose, but I think the cable data itself is still useful.


Why these 2 cables?= Examples of LOW impedence
The data is for 2 mainsteam 25 year old low inductance speaker cables designs that I feel are useful for improving sound, but are not tremendously expensive, (so are less likely to be immediately dismissed) , and they appear to be technologys nobody here has mentioned in previous postings.


Going from here now,
let me also state I have participated in Codec testing in a commercial setting in the past. And I have participated in audio cable testing using a passive switching box designed for this purpose by another member of the Pacific NorthWest Audio Society. Illiminating all the variables was almost impossible ! Each unbalanced type interconnect behaved in a reactive manner that was difficult to control. And my exploration of this type of testing has me concluding that is is almost futile, if you demand it be executed with a total blindfold methodology.



The problem I see with A/B-xing in the convential manner, is that we don''t have the luxery of everybody starting with exactly the same audio test files, as with codecs. The conceptual parallel would be trying to test an 192 kps MP3 file against a 64 kps altrac file. and then a FLAC lossless, against a 32 kps WMA file, etc. as all brands of cable are practically different "Species" of animal.

Every fruit from a different tree....


ONE OPTION= Such physical testing and cable comparisons could be done on the ground, and then the data intered on to the forum, for refinement, and discussion. This data could come from any of us, following a set protocol.




*** But I see another way to conduct cable tests now>>>


This would be to test cables, as has been done with MICROPHONES

In the "Allen Sides Microphone Closet" comparison CD (I can't seem to google it easily...I will post this link soon in a subsequent post) .




Perhaps I could assemble a large amount of cables in one place. And then run audio thru the cables in a methodically structured manner to a calibrated Digital Audio Workstation. Then these FILES of the sound of each cable become quantifiable data in and of themselves. I can interprit them one way, and so can everybody else on the forum. Assumeing the files are prepared correctly.


SOME HURDLES, AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO MAKE THIS WORK

1------Still one of the biggest problem in making tring to make the data useful, is matching each cable to an amplifier uniformly, before the analog sources are encoded into the DAW.

There are Pre-amps that allow you to change the input inpedence, and calibrated resisters could be used to match the levels more closely.

We could use just ONE input ampifier for line level signals, or we could test EVERY cable thru several different types of preamps. I think that more than one type is useful, and perhaps essential. Some recording engineers prefer all class A biased pre amp designs, and others hate IC's, and others use only desrceet topologys, etc, so more than one is a must.

This will cause some matching issues, but one can still look at only all the data for just ONE type of pre amp, if you desire, and draw conlusion from just this one set of data, if the diffferent pre never quite match 100%


2-------It seems clear that a specific set of audio files for each set of tests, needs to be assembled, and sent thru every different cable to be evaluated.

THEN, this set of encodes, should be archived as A WHOLE, for use any further test at a future time. Both source files, and the files for each cable together. Without the RAW source file to compare to, all the files are useless.

This way, the results of old tests can be directly compared to the results of future tests as well. .

3--------Audio Cables all behaive differently at different audio levels. So this needs to be standardized, and documented.

4--------WHAT FAMILYS OF CABLE??

Speaker wire looks the most problematic. And is less of an issue across the board anyway, in my experience. I suggest these can be tested last

Interconnects, unbalanced and 3 pin Balanced will be easier to test, and tremendously useful. I have some $70 interconnects I feel might beat most $1000 ones.

SP/DIF and AES interconnects are an obvious option for testing as well, and many are sure to be surprised at these results. The SP/DIF protocol for instance, is full of unsolvable, intractable issues in the spec itself (it was made for consumer CD players), and better cabling gives large improvements.



I know thats ahrd to swallow....and now must eventually PROVE it !!

but for now, The basic reason this is so, is that the audio is not sent in stable packets with SP/DIF. THUS, analog cable losses change the digital outcome.

A good model, is to think of SP.DIF as a 'glorified 56K modem" Digital information,is sent down an analog line. The wires THD, changes ones, into zeres. So they tend to all sound different.




Any thoughts on this cable TEST MODEL rough proposal??

WaveFlier, you have touched on something like 6 different major forum topics in that single post , all of which have occupied hundreds of posts on HA For now, all I can say is that while a lot of people here may not have experienced extreme hi-end sound, but many actually have, and were nonplussed. Just one example: I went to a Head-Fi meet a few months ago and listened to Ray Samuel's personal setup: A Meridian CD player (507 IIRC), a complete MIT Transparent Cable set, an Emmeline Raptor and all manner of excellent headphones. The CD+cable+amp set was good but I felt it was nothing to write home about.

Pio2001 did some measurements on different cables and came up with some pretty weird results - like the same cable measured differently over the period of 20 minutes or so. I don't have the link on me but it should be searchable. I think the leading hypothesis on the behavior was not burn-in, but merely temperature changes resulting from handling the cables, plus perhaps capacitive effects from different cable positioning. Those sorts of things are really important when you're testing impedances down to the milliohm.

Gosh, your right Legg. If nobody is around that trusts their ears, that isn't much of a foundation for audio testing is it!!

I stand corrected. Your further feedback is definately welcome by me.

Points well taken. I did some Querying of past cable threads, but I will now do more research in the HA archives. People I seen so far, seem to be measuring, and discussing, but not rigorous listening tests. Perhaps you are right;; they don't see the basic utility of it. But a good test is my main goal, not "selling cable"

Both Hi-Fi shows and recording studio are often clueless. Both usually have terrible acoustics. This forum has more audio talent than most records are made with.

I am not interested in electrical measurements of cables, although that can be useful to point the way to the best ones to start listening to. And anybodys data of this kind will be supportive. But logical cable evaluation is almost unheard of anywhere. Nobody here seems to realize there IS NO MODEL for cable testing that gets statisically signifigant data. If 90% of the people participating in a cable test can barely hear any diffference, this is just a stupid test, IMHO.

I have found that CHILDREN make outstanding cable testers. They work fast, and get it done pretty easily, just by being intuitive.

The audiophile crowd tends to have more money than sense, but give them a good long time, and they eventually, they sort it out. There is no need for any of this to be so painful.

If I can produce an audio file test set that allows anyone to jump back and forth QUICKLY between two cables/files, this will solve quite a few problems. The human ear acts like the iris in the eye;; it reacts, and adjusts to the changes in sound continuously. Swapping cables manually takes just too long to hear any difference in the physical world. It's rediculously clumbsy, yet that is how everybody does it.

With this method, we can take the sounds of 100's of different cables, and drop it right into the entire CODEC testing model !

Some tests of this kind have been already done, giving the same expected results. One example is at my web page.

As to

I'm afraid that's simply not true. Unless a cable is defective and/or has some kind of induced nonlinearity (that a regular cheap cable doesn't have at all), cables behave the same at all audio levels, because that's what a linear device does, and cables are very very linear devices. If you are talking about EMI background noise on cables, that's a different issue.

As to science vs. engineering etc etc... the best engineers are, among other things, the ones that best know about science, despite what some people (that in fact know quite less about science) want to believe.

Yes.

At the very least, an engineer cannot properly judge the progress he is making, without understanding the scientific method (which entails understading about hypothesis testing etc...).

Can't agree more.

I wish more people (including many engineers I know) realized this.

The particularly interesting implication of this becomes apparent when you view engineering in general as simply a structured exercise in problem solving. The implication is that knowledge of science, or as Garf pointed out the "scientific method" (i.e., something like the hypothetico-deductive method) leads to better problem solving in general, if in fact the best engineers are also the ones with the best grasp of science.

Science and engineering are, despite what some people think, are not at odds. Science simply provides the data, whereas engineering applies certain rules to the data in order to derive a desired result.

This is perhaps the main reason why so-called "high end" audiophile products that proport to produce results in direct opposition to known science -- achieving this through some mysterious application of "superior" engineering -- are usually nothing more than snake oil. If the supposed result of an engineering technique cannot be explained in terms of known science then there are a few things going on:

1) There is no "engineering" happening at all. This would have to be the case because if the scientific data is wrong, then there's no engineering that can be done, since engineering relies upon science. The only way engineering could happen in this case is if the engineer had a different, correct scientific knowledgebase to to utilize, but this doesn't happen either because you never see the groups producing these products providing new scientific results. So what you're left with is that someone simply made a lucky guess about how to solve some particular problem. This is incredibly unlikely. People don't just make lucky guesses like this, at least not nearly at the rate that the audiophile crowd would claim or believe. If they did, then because of the systematic nature of science, we should see similar reprocussions throughout a wide variety of other fields, and this just is not happening.

2) The supposed result in fact does not exist.

It should be pretty obvious at this point which of the two is more likely.

Given this, you would expect most people to be more skeptical about these matters. But they don't seem to be, probably because they don't understand the original point mentioned by KikeG and Garf.

All of this doesn't necessarily mean that it is impossible for someone to come up with a product that actually does do something seemingly fantastic. All it means is that it's unlikely, moreso the more fantastic. You can't simply assume that the fantastic effect does not exist, but you can make a good guess beforehand that it is unlikely that it does, and continue your analysis from that point. This allows room for belief revision and the restructuring and strengthening of your knowledgebase if the fantastic effect turns out to be real, while also allowing you to expend as little effort (e.g., in this case usually money) as possible to achieve good results when deciding upon which route to take (e.g., in this case achieving good sound, either through making a good product, or deciding which system to spend your money on).

Dibrom, Garf, KikeG, you just successfully rewired my brain.

I'm amazed to realize that science and engineering are simply not the same thing, and I have been very sloppy in mixing up the two definitions, at a minimum, in debate. Even thou I already comprehended that their goals are often very different. This resembles the difference between truth and justice;; it's weird that one would occur without the other, but it happens all the time !!

It's also so weird to think of engineers accomplishing anything at all without a better grasp of science. But I guess being able to make mathematical calculations well, and solve problems with mental organization, doesn't make one capable of building and testing a hypothesis that advances the subject or process of the problem or task at hand.

Since it appears that I'm responding to a posting by the founder of the HA forum, let me also say to one and all, that I do not wish to be a Troll around here. I define a forum Troll as one who picks ideological or pseudoscientific fights with others on the forum purely for the joy they get in the battle itself, but they are not interested in learning anything from the discussion in the end. On the correct Forum format this can actually lead to accidental progress advances, but obviously, the HA forum doesn't wish take this luxury of extra time and energy with it's focus. And has stated so clearly, long before I arrived.

I am therefore not a Troll, but it appears that I'm a pretty crappy scientist, and only an engineer, of as of yet unquantified abilities.

I think the main reasons why some people thought that you were a troll was because the combination of two things:

1) Bad formatting of your first post which almost made it unreadable(in first sight, it just looks like a big chunk of gibberish without cues)... therefore raising the "annoyance"-bar on the reader-side before they even began reading and continuing to raise it while reading. Those people simply asumed that you were already familiar with the formatting-languages of forums, and intentionally made your post hard to read to annoy people. It is very rare that someone with knowledge in audio-technology posts on ha.org while not knowing the most basic BB-Code of inet-forums.... but it happens.

2) You touched a very hot topic in your post which had high potential of causing flames.

Both simultaneusly happens rarely without malicious intent - so people jumped to the seemingly obvious conclusion a bit too fast.

===WHOOPS, what I said was incorrect. (for all practical purposes)

But sadly, one brand or model of cable will behave differently in two different brands of gear in terms of frequency response, dynamics, RF rejection, which determines modulation and character of the THD. Different lengths change things. Because the IN/OUTs of analog amplifiers are not standardized anything near that of digital audio, after it has been digitized. This causes more problems than most people experience or realize most of the time, but rigorous testing reveals it, and there is some technical evidence to explain it. (but not enough, IMHO..) and it makes getting a level playing Field for any good testing difficult. This causes a cable tester to go crazy, because you find a good cable for a task, and then plug it into a new piece of gear, and now it behaves differently. So then you have to start over again to get a solid match, when ever the equipment changes. THUS, you have two simultaneous tasks to sort out A---which is a great cable, and B---which works optimally with each piece of gear. It becomes a black art, instead of engineering.

Some designs have more or less of this effect. I tend to favor Low inductance designs, because I get LESS of this effect in my results. I know many who obsess on low capacitance, or a special metal they like, or the connector, etc.. But there is simply no universal cable design for each type of common audio connection , unbalanced, balanced, or loudspeaker output that will function consistently in every application. The solution would be for each manufacturer to optimize a cable for each of their own products, and their specific needs. This happens occasionally....but is a difficult task commercially to sustain. Unfortunately, many audiophiles and recording engineers both wish to screw up the signal path themselves rather than pay extra for a wire matched to the product !!

EXAMPLE OF ANALOG KAOS TAMED= Microphones are also fraught with endless nasty analog variables of simultaneous occurrence. Klaus Heyne is a microphone tuner who has mastered the art and engineering of combining both sets of audio variables. No machine can do what Heyne does by hand to calibrate a mic to make it sound correct. For instance, In my opinion, what he does with an older Neumann microphone clearly surpasses what Neumann is currently manufacting under tighter technically based tolerances.

A/B-Xing is almost useless for what Klaus is doing here.

www.prosoundweb.com/recording/ bruce_borgeson/kh/heyne.shtml

Cable performance has nothing to do with microphone performance. Differences between good microphones are thousands of times greater than differences between good cables. The funny thing is that, good cables are cheap, whereas good microphones are not. Same thing goes for speakers vs. cables. And to a lower extent, to sources and amps vs. cables.

Another thing that fails in your argumentation about cable types and applications, is that any adequately sized and constructed, yet inexpensive cable, will do well in most audio applications, meaning for "well", that it will perform as good as anything you can get, from an audible point of view. So, what is missing in your analysis of cables, is that you first have to verify, in a reliable manner, that the cable at test is actually causing an audible difference. Reliable means that the test must be done under blind conditions, because otherwise, expectation effects will make the results totally unreliable. Or, at least, you should try to quantify, via objective measurements at the end of the audio chain, which is the actual influence of a particular cable. With a simple and cheap, but adequately selected cable, this measured influence will turn out to be negligible from an audible point of view.

Also, special cable selection should be an issue only for special, rare cases, such as very low impedance speakers, very long cable runs, unstable amps, or very high EMI area, to give some examples.

Just to finish nitpicking, cables do not affect dynamics or distortion (THD in your post) at the audio chain, for the reasons I gave at my previous post.

Edit: typos.

Hey that's cool, you are not nitpicking in my book kikeG If if you were, that's okay. Your strong opinions are welcome by me.

Boy this world with no annoying THD being contributed by the wire you speak off....sounds pretty cool !! I wish I could live there more often.


A scientific Fable= ABX VERSUS THE CONTROL WITH NO BLINDFOLD=

Here is two tests, one ABX, one not. You tell me which is the best way to see.

You are at the optimitrist, and he does the familier "First choice......second choice" as you look thru the different lens diopters 3x. 4x, rtc, as he determines your new eyeglass perscription. . The eye doctor uses AB=X testing !!

But looky here= I can take a pair of Binoculars, and just turn the adjustable focas eyepiece with my hand, untill it's in focus.
____

The optometrist leaves his office with data he can use to build a fixed pair of glasses. He is an engineer.

The other guy focuses by hand using his binoculars. HE is an audiophile.

The primary usefulness of the optometrists methods, is that his measurements are on paper now, and his method of fitting glasses is very consistent. The data when he's done even fits on a small card. And here's the best part= We can plot the results, and see if his vision is getting worse over time. That makes him a scientist.

The guy with the binoculars, you just have to JUST TRUST HIM when he says he can see just fine and in focus with his tool, the binoculars. And they are 8x magnification, so he's always bumping into things. But he can at least see....so he says. Nobody is really sure about that claim.....

But once in a while, the guy with the glasses is at a disadvantage. Because his fixed focus eyeglasses do not change, until he goes back to the eye Doctor to get fitted for a new pair. It is therefore a slow, but thorough method the eye doctor has. Binoculars focus to a new focal point INSTANTLY Just turn the knob. Even a child can do it.

Now, what are the subjects SEEING thru their glasses? Have we forgotten about that in our test? Was that a pretty lady in a poster on the wall, or was that just the eye charts? Music anybody?


In my opinion, Most subjective based "audiophile" testing of stereo components, cable included, is often out of focus. They don't know how to operate their own binoculars very well, and there is that silly bumping into things. But they rarely lose sight of what they are looking for, which is better sound, achieved by channeling their passion to hear new things. It's instinctual listening, and very difficult to quantify.

The strict ABX tester now with fitted glasses, can rest assured that he won't be out of focus, even when he's not so sure all the time. but sadly, he often doesn't see what's right in front of him.


Who's got the best eyeglasses? ---Answer= Both types of glasses allow you see in different ways. .
__

_______
I agree that Microphone and cable performance are two different things. And the losses in resolution are more dramatic than with wire, where there is at least a common AES electrical specification for the preamplifier's that designers are supposed to adhere to when they can. A Link To Klaus was there for people to explore it themselves.

You may wonder them why all the fuss on my part? Because now, digital audio is so linear. It's shows all the flaws, AND the music, and just one piece of bad wire, ruins everything. A strong fixed principle in audio, is that it is only as good as it's weakest link. No more hiding in a nice warm 7% pile of mostly even ordered THD of a vinyl record.

Fundamentally, the burden of proof is on me to illustrate in some scientific way the losses I experience every day in the chains between audio equipment. I must stand behind that statement, (even if I don't embrace it as strongly as many on HA do) because otherwise I cannot share any meaningful test results.

But there is SHEAR POWER in other methods of listening.


THUS= I mostly respectfully disagree with the quite absolute statement of yours that no losses worth being concerned about occurs, as you state at the end of your post here. Beyond that, i think we are probably on the same planet at least. Just as you believe that my lack of blindfold is making me only THINK I am hearing these supposed losses, I too believe that if you listened more closely in a different way, you would notice these losses everywhere. It's time to get in the shoes of the crazy audiophile guy for awhile to see what you might be missing. I'm a recording engineer, but audiophiles teach me new things constantly. Resonance control for instance, is amazing, and my audio club showed me what a difference it can make. (once in a while..) The best part is, resonance control costs almost nothing.

I am not claiming anybody on this forum is ignorant. But Ignorance can be bliss about cables, and it can seem like an especially useless activity to compare them, and test them much of the time. But to imagine that cables all don't have any tonal personality and in fact you feel they are essentially neutral in character makes interpreting all test data impossible. You are essentially claiming no test is needed at all, even if it was the sloppiest subjective test imaginable. The type of distinction I am drawing, is no wild claim at all I don't think. And that is that two different cables may measure almost the same with a multi-meter, but the combined difference in engineering and construction between them make them sound Different. As much as changing CD players, or power amplifiers. Almost never as much as changing speakers, and obviously, put your real money in the speakers !! (or ignore cables....it's your system, not mine)

I've met lots of people who flatly claim that all power amps sound the same. I will never be able to convince such a person of anything. He has seen the specs and their mind is made up. .0003 % distortion, equals neutrality.

This isn't a sad story. Realizing that WIRE is just one more tweekable variable with complexity, means that wire becomes a TOOL to tune the system to compensate for removing nodes from the rooms acoustics, without the phase shift of active EQ. I am NOT a golden ear, but I've tuned quite a few rooms using primarily the choice of cable types to nudge things around ;; .....was this all a dream?

An analog recording studio is not where everybody listens. But Please entertain the following idea for a minute= Such an extreme amount of cable that is in the typical studio, has informed what I hear. I don't know anything for sure. Just the presence of differences when they show up. How much cable is this? As an example, lets take a 40 input channel console, which has about 200 analog connection point on it. These 200 cable connections, must travel say 30 feet to the patch bay. 200X30, is 6,000 feet of cable. Then say, a 500 point patch bay, and the 24 track record, 48 wire runs to get back and forth, and this machine is in a separate quiet room ............

THUS, before digital changed things a bit, the typical studio that recorded pop music routinely had easily a MILE of analog cable. I don't get to use such a large place as often as I like, but it is a window into the sound of cable in stark contrast to the music flowing thru the wires to the extreme. Good grief, that's one hell of a lot of copper, and most engineers are not sad to see it go digital, and I suddenly want to effectively quote Carl Sagan.....Billions and Billions...

.After living in this sonic world for years, now I easily hear the changes between cable types in smaller environments now, as the artifacts stand out like a sore thumb. I walk into a friend house now, and might exclaim 'You changed the wires" Sheer repetition is at work, and if I want to hear something just for my own use, the blindfold is not a tool that helps me.

What I'm beginning to realizing lately, is that blindfold testing poisons your ability to make distinctions over the long term, if that's all you do. It is in fact NEGATIVE training for hearing the difference between cables. Every time you are zoning in on a sound, BOINK, you lose your points of reference as you quickly go right on to the next test. Which because of the blindfold, is a slate wiped clean. A/B--X testing is very stressful,, and fatigue sets in quick, as many of the codec testers have mentioned on HA.

Contrast this to hearing the same vocal go by all day during a mixing session, but then suddenly something changes......"hey, what was that?". Listening to the same damn mix for 10 hours straight is just a different way to arrive at some understanding of the sonics involved, and enable clear choices to be made.

I'm determined to find out new ways to quantify this type of listening. And also to learn more about using computers for ABX blindfold testing.

Please explain how a cable (which, in every textbook I have seen will be modelled as a linear time invariant system) can introduce harmonic distortion? Are you claiming that cables have a non-linear effect on signals? Do you have any evidence to back this up?

Okay, science and history lesson-time. There have been many things that work even though the reason for their invention is wrong. There are lots of training techniques developed by running and swimming coachs on the basis of reasoning that turns out to be physiologically b.s.... but some of these training techniques still work, and are still employed. Which is to say, there's a reason that they work, but we've not figured it out yet. It's for this reason, I assume, that stereophile wants to remain "skeptically open-minded."
Science that assumes it knows exactly how something works, and assumes that something doesn't work just because the presented explanation doesn't make sense, is stuck in its own pride. Fyi.

edit: I realize that if blind-tests have disproven 10 different weird audiophile claims in a row, it makes more sense to disblieve them at first glance. But the philosophy of science that was stated here is, as stated, dead wrong nonetheless.

This sounds like the arguments that came out around 1895 that went something like: "if you've observed electricity working, then you can't believe in God anymore." Pretty poor logic, actually.
On some counts, claims of religions cannot be empirically verified or disproven. Like the 42 virgins thing. This is very different from an audio claim that could be refuted by a blind test.
In the case of an historical claim made by people based on empirical observation at the time (e.g., guy was dead and then came alive again), we are left to believe or disbelieve testimony passed down over time. However, to write such a claim off because it seems weird is pretty pathetic "scientific" logic. Science needs to presume that no mysterious or supernatural or black-box forces operating, in order to build a model. But that remains an assumption nonetheless, and science cannot prove it for cases (such as historical cases) where replication is impossible.

Btw, I teach sociology of religion at the University of North Carolina in the U.S., and I'm on listservs of Christians and listservs of atheists, and I debunk poor and false claims on religion-related issues wherever I hear them - it's equal opportunity, although HA is only likely to exhibit hard-line rationalist biases. (Not that most people here exhibit such biases, but they are much more likely to show up at HA than biases toward thinking that everyone should believe your testimony...)

edit: on the gullibility issue, it is certainly true that humans have the capacity to believe a lot of things, many of them disprovable. That's part of what makes social science so interesting. For most things that people believe, social community or social support networks of people who believe that way are necessary to make the belief plausible.

That's correct up to a certain extent. But in science we do not JUST TRUST, what if we put under test the binocular guy. Say we let him have his own adjusted binoculars and some other binoculars adjusted by the optometrist (or anyone for that matter). Then proceed to ask him on which he can see better (ABC HR) or to identify which binoculars he is using (ABX).

That way you can be sure if he can tell for a fact a difference between two binoculars and not just buy his own opinion.

With cables is the same, some people claim to hear a difference, but only if we test their ears WE can be sure there is some audible difference. Many audiophiles would just discard double blind tests with the argument that they just know what they hear, when in fact that's a contradiction, since double blind tests actually require you to TRUST and KNOW what you're hearing.

Cheers.

Science can not assert that it knows exactly how something works. Science is always provisional.

What one can say when faced with YAAC (Yet Another Audiophile Claim) is to ask the claimant for some evidence that can be repeated, tested, and verified.

Yes, this most often leads to a flame war, I'm sorry to say, but at least one can ask the person asserting the claim to provide the evidence.

Audiophiles, I will note, are champions of trying to shift the burden, demanding proofs of the negative, and the like.

When something has been tested 10 times, and a contrary assertion emerges, it is up to the claimant to provide some evidence to support the claim.

The claimant does not have to provide any mechanism, the claimant does not need to pretend to know a mechanism, but the claimant must be able to provide some positive evidence in support of the claim.

Two entirely different things. In your example, the training techniques work. The results are visible. The evidence exists for anybody to measure and quantify. In the case of audiophile stuff, often the results don't exist. The results are not measurable. They are not quantifiable. Very often, you have to do ABX or similar testing to verify that the results exist in the first place.


If the explanation given to you to explain something like this doesn't make sense, and the results are not easily quantifiable, then the odds of you being sold a bunch of BS are pretty high.

If the claimed effect exists, great, that's scientific data. There's absolutely no need to explain that which clearly exists, except in order to learn something.

So when somebody tries to explain something to me using a non-sensical explanation, well then they're trying to sell me something. Usually it means they're trying hard to convince me that the effect is real and not a figment of my imagination.

Again, when the given explanation is clearly nonsense, the product usually doesn't work. This applies to lots more than just audio.

All I can say is that this is... plainly impossible. Please tell us what is the order of magnitude of frequency response deviations caused from room nodes, and then what is the order of magnitude of frequency response deviations caused from a simple interconnect or speaker cable, both at audio frequencies. This is basic audio knowledge, predictable in theory and corroborated by practice, and this knowledge screams against your claims.

I suppose this is pretty much true these days. But it's kind of disingenuous to say that engineering that does not follow known laws of science is not "real" engineering. During the 19th and in particular early 20th century there was plenty of engineering that was going beyond the boundaries of known science. For example, the photoelectric effect was discovered, and devices were being made that used it, long before Einstein explained how it really worked (and coincidentally invented the idea of quantized light).

Another example would be Tesla. He was a fantastic engineer but a really lousy scientist. He made several discoveries, which worked in his devices, but were totally false in his scientific explanations. It wasn't until later that real scientists came and described the actual principles behind them. In some ways it's a shame because he has become the hero and rolemodel of generations of crackpot inventors.

Right now, you can see the same effect in biology, especially molecular biology, genetics, and pharmacology. We don't know how everything works yet, and people are regularly inventing things that don't fit in any of the established models. I think in some ways pharmaceutical research is just as much engineering as it is pure science. If you ask anybody in that field how medicines that treat disorders of the mind work, they will admit that nobody knows.

But your more restricted point, dealing with the fields of electrical and audio engineering, is 100% true. All the basics are tested and proved laws at this point. Someone who says that their novel device does something, which the laws say is not possible, had better have some convincing evidence to prove it.

Otto: I agree with everything in your post just above this one. It sounded to me, however, as if stereophile was reserving final judgment until data was actually gathered. (Not that there's any evidence that data was gathered, but the logic of his posture is good.) My point is that the training techniques were generated on the basis of b.s. theories, but still ended up working, and have thus stood the test of time. I would also say that it's possible for audio gear to be designed under incorrect assumptions, but to end up working for some other or unknow reason. I agree with you that it usually doesn't work, though.
The larger reason for my post in response for your above claim was the apparent rationalist scientific assumption which implies that if we cannot understand how/why something works, then it must not be real. Your comment seemed framed in these terms, although you might not have meant it this way.

The logical leap to religion that spun off of your post was much worse, but that sort of logic is set up by the assumption that we must be able to verify any mechanism for the thing to be real...

Yeah, I guess I wasn't very clear initially. I was specifically talking about products for sale and manufacturer claims and so forth. I didn't really mean to extend it out to a general principle like that.

That's not exactly what I said. I allowed for the fact that engineering that produces some sort of result which appears to supersede known science can be the result of an engineer with a more correct scientific knowledgebase.

I suppose I should clarify that somewhat. As has already been pointed out in this thread, science is provisional. That is, so far at least, science never provides a "complete" account of nature. This also means that most (all?) scientific theories are not entirely correct, although the assumption is that over time as they evolve, their successive approximations increase in accuracy. So it's plainly possible for an engineer or someone to come along with a partial bit of knowledge that goes beyond the current scientific knowledgebase just enough to bring about some desired effect without understanding exactly how it works at a fundamental level (I'm making the assumption here that something has to be understood about the effect at some level, otherwise I maintain that it's not engineering but lucky guessing). This is fine, because in such a case, it usually means that such an event will over time lead to a filling in of the gaps necessary to have such a fundamental understanding.

BUT, this is only likely to happen in certain instances which follow the rest of the pattern that I've outlined. And in the case of the audiophile products in question, you don't see any of this.

Here's an example which I think fleshes out Dibrom's argument a bit.

Advanced civil engineering existed for centuries before Newtonian physics, which at some superficial level appears to be necessary for proper structural design. However, IIRC, engineers in the middle ages relied on a mix of Aristotelian physics and their own homebrew math to get jobs done, and given that the Notre Dame is still standing, it worked out pretty well.

Good example. As a sociologist, I should also point out that there's another difference between major buildings designed and built "back then" as compared with now. The logic of the market is much more pervasive in modern society and culture, which means that questions of efficiency play a larger role in how things are designed and built. Some Roman roads still exist and are solid, because their foundations went down to the bedrock. Most American freeways, on the other hand, are massively repaired and reconstructed every couple of decades. Notre Dame and Nantes (and the great wall of China) are still standing, but virtually none of the churches built in this century will follow suite. The point here is that craftsmanship and durability are, at the logical extremes, opposed to efficiency (assuming efficiency has a limited temporal scale).

Ok, look, guys, this thread is headed for the boneyard, I think.

Some things to consider:

Science is emperical. Even though the scientific method wasn't developed yet, ancient architects were doing what became science because they were hypothesizing that "this building will not fall down" and then testing their hypothesis by building the structure.

Engineering is science, too, because the final test is "does this turkey fly?" That's an empirical test even if you don't know WHY it can fly.


Finally, while it's NICE to have a mechanism, science does not have to involve a mechanism, i.e. an answer to "why did this work". It is sufficient to hypothesize that "this will work" and then find out.

When one comes up with a theory of mechanism, it also has to be falsifiable, and in order to advance your theory, you have to find things it will predict, and test those predictions.

***I support sending this thread TO THE BONEYARD, as far as my own further posting to it.

Because=

A-----It is now flying off topic into debating the very processes of Science and Engineering. Even God has been mentioned. I find it all quite useful myself, and the responses are very much appreciated, but this is a Hardware section of the forum. Time for me to provide more hard evidence to respect HA TOC # 8, but do it with more intelligence than just 2 cables spec sheet, and with it's own thread.

B-----The only statement I find totally unsupportable, is that the different performance and tonality's I find present in different brands and types of audio cable are not present in ANY form useful to everybody who listens to recorded sound. (and not just professional audio) My belief is very strong, and so it got my goat !! But I have addressed that point to the best of my abilities in the language of theory, and subjective argument. Beyond that, we will just have to agree to disagree, if the shoe fits.


***RESOURCE FOR FUTURE CABLE TESTING= There is a company that sells high end audio interconnects that has assembled an enormous LIBRARY of of high and low cables for you to use for testing, and come up with your own conclusions. After years of looking, I have found no other such CABLE LIBRARY service, so even thou this is "plug" for them, it seems to be the only game in town, and therefore serves science.

It works like this= You choose a nice assortment, that you think is useful, and then you pay the USP shipping both directions, plus a percentage of the cables cost that builds up as none-refundable. You keep them for 2-4 weeks to listen. This percentage is not refundable, so in that sense is not a free service. But you can test an enormous amount of different cables in your own sound system, before you end up buying just one cable in order to get your money out of the system, as the price of admission to participate. They also sell low price, and used cables too. Used cables to me are actually a superiour choice, because you can be assured that they are well broken in, and the dielectric sheath is well charged. The biggest surprise to me in my own testing, was with AC cables....but that brands me an even worse heretic ! so I'll stop now>>>

LINK= http://www.fatwyre.com/

WaveFiler, what you, and most "audiophiles" can't seem to accept, and in consecuence don't realize, is that you are victims of expectation effects, also called placebo effect. This effect is influencing your perception. This is a known phenomena that is very easy to verify, and to which humans are very prone to. This is not rare at all, and nobody is inmune to it. This is the part of science, about human perception, that you are continuously leaving out.

Let's see. You observe phenomena that doesn't match with established, verified physics theory, and for which it seems you can't give a reasonable scientific explanation that obeys these laws of physics. Curiously, this phenomena is very elusive under blind conditions.

Well... could it be that there is something, not really related to the laws of physics, that is influencing the phenomena you are observing? Something that is not happening when you repeat the experiment under blind conditions? Something that does fit with other known and verified phenomena? Can the scientifict inside of you figure out what could it be? (Hint: look at the 1st paragraph).

Edit:typo.

I suffer from falling victum to the Placebo effect just as much as the next guy, and I can see that positive results from any well designed Double blind test process as a solid way to end up with results we can all agree on. I am fully planning on using the Win ABX tools to help do this. Testing Soundcard hardware with listening tests is a tough nut to crack, and the data looks very intriguing. Much Tougher than Codecs to test, IMHO, which have stronger tonal qualitys. Who still likes 64 kps MP3 anymore, and considers it a CLONE of the source?

*** In fact, largely for some levity here, here's how I exploit the placebo effect in the studio. A musican wants me to change something like the EQ. "Brighter please". As producer, I don't want it brighter, so I let the musician watch me turn the EQ knob on the recording console, and then while I'm looking them straight in the eyes, I also turn the knob right back to the same position it was at previously. "Is that better?" I ask. "Oh much much better ! GREAT !!" they say. Every damn time. ^ > ^ So please give me this much credit;; I am familier with the placebo effect, and I'm fooled by it all the time. This does not mean that ALL knowledge oftained by listening is impossible to obtain without removing the placebo effect. It does not mean that I let it get the better of me all the time.

People learn things by living with an audio phenominon of any kind, for a very long time. The brain compensates all the time with what our ears send to the brain in the short term, and its not easy to sort this stuff out quickly. If you have a computer fan whining in your ear, after awhile, you just don't hear it. Your ear does, but your brain stops caring. This occurs with EQ as well;; this makes rock and roll mixers want to keep turning UP THE VOLUME, just to hear more bass, but the brain just doesn't care. THUS, at a certain point, you must "Flush the cache" in a sense Take a break, or just listen to something else, and come back. However, if you hear the same tool, and compare the same tool, for multiple days, weeks, months, you learn. Clarity shows up simply NOT obtainable in the space of a fixed listening test. And far from being SMALL effects that somehow don't warrent our attention just because they are small, these effects you notice form the building blocks to REMOVE this aspect from acting as a placebo, to create an entire perception of what we hear you can then believe in.

And putting ABX testing aside for a minute, who is to say that SPEC sheets and scientific data is not a powerfull placebo affecting outcome as well? Audiphiles know this, and DON'T trust spec sheet very much as a result. (stereophile mag) . A CLASS A biased amplifier, yeilds usually something like .1% THD at best, and Biased Class B, is cleaner on paper, .0003% etc But what is the harmonic content of class A?? Even ordered, not the harsh odd ordered harmonic content emphasized. So call this irrational, but those who spend a lot of time comparing such things, are JADED. I once owned a KENWOOD power amp I bought 30 years ago, and the THD spec said .0001 %. After awhile, the amp gave me a headache. It turns out, the --TIM--Transient Inter-modulation spec was terrible. My eyeballs fooled me again.....

ONE EXAMPLE WITH WIRE OF KNOWLEDGE GATHERED OVER TIME= I have 3 mid priced sets of speaker cables for instance, that I consider tools. When I first acquired each model cable seperately, I had extremely vague sense that they were somehow superiour to what I was previously using. Some days, they had me dancing around the room in joy, and the next day, I couldn't hear any difference between the different cables, or they seems to sound wrong, when I swapped them back in. It really depended on the music being heard, or other factors. But gradually, hearing the cables on different playback environments, and different amplifiers, these difference became very predictable. THUS, Now, I have all kinds of solid RESULTS that took time to gather. Now I know which of the 3 models sounds the best of anything I own, when used in other control rooms, which one sound good in my studio, but nowhere else EXCEPT mine, purely from a solid match to my speakers load. And Lastly, which model I don't like any more, and wish I had never purchased in the first place. It's totally obvious to me. Now, hypothetical= I might be visiting somebodys home, hear their stereo, and exclaim "Your speakers tweeter is very vivid, and seems to always dominate. You could absorb this treble by adding more abosorbsion to the rooms wall, and this is probably the best way to deal with it. If your Wife says no, you could try X brand speaker cable. It's treble is quite mellow, and your 16 gauge Lampwire is a little strident." If that's audiophelia Nervosa to you, so be it. To me, I solved a problem.
And these days, digital audio is so stunning, I'm saying, this may now be YOUR issue too. That's up to you. Audio is only as good as it's weakest link.

***This does not mean 'golden Ear", it simply means paying attention to something beside spec sheets, and theory, and puting the work in LISTENING. And by periodically swapping one of the three speaker cables in to readdress the tranformation they impart, to study it, I eventually learned this parrticular phenomenon. . If you think your own hearing is incapable of this, I disagree. Some ARE "tone deaf", but in my experience ALL of this is learned behaiver. But A Priori, you MUST be capable of entertaining the notion that the cable itself has a sound of it's own to begin with. That's the only part of this entire thread I find patently absurd. Analog Cable is NOT NEUTRAL to the ear, by any stretch of the imagination.

As to ABX, the very fact than any double blind test is is somewhat stressful and fatigueing to participate in, is a strong clue that it creates it's own set of limitations. Which might be addressable and improved upon. Perhaps not. But ABX is good science, because the results it DOES obtain, are very tight.

Did you ever care to verify via measurements the supposed tonal differences between cables? Unless a cable has extreme LRC values, and regular cables don't, it won't have any tonal attributes. If you did those measurements, please post your findings.

You didn't ? Then please re-read carefully my previous post and offer any alternative explanation. Until then, stop saying BS.

Maybe, but DBT is still the best known method we currently HAVE to verify perceived audio. Unless you can come up with something better, pointing out its (already known) shortcomings is comparable to whining about life not being perfect - there's no alternative anyways unless you create it, so you either have to do best with what means you've got, invent something better, or you give up.

The problem with current non-blind methods is that they are inefficient in terms of results, because placebo will cause so many "ghosts" that you end up where you started: you still dont know with a high probability if its true or not. Or in statistical terms: the margin of error is so wide that the result is basically just saying "everything is possible, nothing is for sure".