given the source -- 6moons -- I would answer: No, Yes, Yes, No, and No, scientific trends are irrelevant to them.

Welcome to the world of 'high end' audio reviewing.




Did actual scientists make those claims without qualification, in scientific literature? Or are you quoting science as cartooned in the media?




Right, and if you know 'The Secret' you can WISH your way to wealth!

Since scientists started to claim, that they alone can "explain the world", that also burdens them with the responsibility of how their experiments are transmitted, explained, teached and interpreted, plus the whole moral issue of new tech. They claim to be able to do anything, now deal with the consequences. In other words: scientists are fully responsible for choosing their cooperation partners, like employers, etc. - they cannot honestly get away from that burden, since they were the ones who practically fired those, who in the past were responsible for that (i.e. philosophers).


You are aware, that since quite a while, the amount of evidence for "metaprogramming"-techniques has become so big, that it is now in widespread use by mental science, right? Or did you prefer to ignore that all that information for the sake of believing in the materialistic worldview of "natural science"?

The value of science is that it's a self correcting procedure, rather than any of the individual results of science. Most of what we know as "scientific fact" is probably wrong - some of it subtly, and some of it badly. What it is, however, is less wrong than most of the alternatives.

Consider Newton's mechanics. As a model of how moderately heavy things behave when travelling at moderate speeds, it's great. It is, however, slightly wrong. Now consider mechanics as understood by the ancient Greeks. That mechanics is also wrong. So do they have equal value? No. One is *more* wrong than the other. Wrong isn't a binary state - some theories are more wrong than other theories. Now consider interconnects. You (nobody in particular) say that magical faeries carry the sounds along the cable, an become grumpy if the cable isn't silver and make the bits sound worse, and I say that all interconnects will sound identical. I am wrong, but you are *more* wrong.

As soon as some scientific (or technical) fact is not 100% right, people seem to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A good scientist (either trained, or an amateur) comes up with a new theory which fits the observed facts better. Then they design experiments to see whether their theory fits observations under a range of conditions. After a while, that theory will become scientific fact, until somebody finds a piece of evidence which refutes it, and the process starts afresh. All scientific and technical books should come with a warning sticker (like cigarettes) which says "the theories contained in this book are likely to be incorrect, but are they are the best theories that we have to explain the available evidence".

Science isn't a religion. The facts presented are not dogma. Everybody should be encouraged to test these facts with experiments, where possible. Don't believe that you can't hear the difference between two brands of power supply capacitor? Great! Now design an experiment to show that you can. Don't believe that FLAC is lossless? Great! Now design an experiment to find a counter example. Believe that you can hear the difference between two brands of garden extension lead? Great! Apply a powerful existing technique (like an ABX perceptual test, or a network analyzer) to show that you can.

I know I am preaching to the choir somewhat (and horribly, horribly offtopic), but this "I don't believe in science" idea really makes me angry. Science isn't asking for you to believe. It's not a magic faerie that lives of belief. Science is asking you to form your own beliefs by carefully observing the world around you, or by trusting the opinions of others who have carefully observed the world around them and reported their observations.

So, somebody once said that nuclear power would be too cheap to meter. They were wrong. However, they were more right than the guy who said that splitting the atom at all would be impossible. Who, in turn, was more right than the guy who said that there was no such thing as atoms. Incorrect theories do not make science wrong - quite the contrary - they drive science forward. They make use look more carefully at the world. They give us better and newer theories which will be less wrong.

Wouldn't you rather have it that way, than just to assume that the world was made of cheese and be too scared to look closely in case you shattered that illusion?

Not only does this not answer the question I posed, it's also absurd. Scientists claim to be able to do anything? Since when? Are you getting your ideas about science from 1920's pulp magazines?





Again, this is just bizarre. No one was 'practically fired' -- what happened was that what used to be called 'natural philosophy' developed into science.




Er....'metaprogramming' will only change your behavior -- it won't cause the universe to respond to your desires, which is what the new age nonsense of 'The Secret' claims that the right sort of attitude can achieve. And btw, what is 'mental science'?

Really, this is kind of embarrassing...someone on hydrogenaudio ranting about someone else's 'materialistic worldview'? I hope you get better.

What i find more embarassing is to be totally focussed on what is claimed by someone or a group of people, without actually checking if those claims are true. Anyways, this is getting too off-topic, so i'm not gonna get further into this.

P.S.: I distance myself from the implied claim by some other poster than "magic" can "bring rain" and stuff. This is according to currently available knowledge is bullshit. I do however fully agree, that magic (which is just another term for "metaprogramming plus a lot of unnecessary mysticism") can in some circumstances cure bodily damages and nearly always aid in an improvement. If that weren't the case, you wouldn't need those nice doublebliind-tests in medicine, right? :-)

Too bad., I'd like you to present evidence that the things you claim scientists are saying and believing, have actually been said and believed by scientists, thanks. We can start with 'science can do anything'. As a
scientist myself, I'm perplexed that I wasn't clued into this incredible secret in grad school or as a postdoc.



So, you misunderstand placebo effects and DBT too. I'm not encouraged. I'm also not encouraged by the repeated recourse to 'metaprogramming', which I confess is not a concept I ever recall seeing in the neuroscience literature (or did you mean something else by 'mental science')?

I never claimed that they themselves say that. I am claiming that they are lying in that regard (that their intentions are different to what they claim their intentions are). Scientists "believe" that they do not "believe" - else their "belief" wouldn't work.

Many audio(head)philes claim changing interconnects make the biggest difference.. I wonder if there are any subjective listening tests performed on interconnects???

I know the powercable test has been done in HA once- And the result was very promising.

I would love to do tests like this, and could probably get access to some high end interconnects for the test. The problem, however, is that the test subjects really need to be "true believers" for the null ABX result to be interesting at all.

audio jewellery.

What I was trying to say - albeit a bit mischievously - a few posts ago was that there's rubbish being bandied about on both sides of the argument. On the one hand we have those taken in by snake oil. On the other we have people claiming out of hand that a piece of wire is a piece of wire and can't possibly affect the sound of a system - even though they haven't bothered to listen themselves.

As always the truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, different interconnects and speaker cables can sound different. Not every one sounds different to every other one but neither do they all sound the same. The difficulty of course is in deciding when different = better.

In principle I would be more than happy to take part in double blind tests to resolve this one. However, I strongly suspect that if I didn't reach the "right" conclusion all sorts of reasons would be found as to why the test was invalid.

The best approach, I believe, is what has been suggested by several others. Try making some yourself and have a listen. Soldering isn't a difficult skill to acquire. If you're worried about self-deception creeping in get a friend/wife/whoever to change the cables without you looking. There are plenty of "recipes" for DIY cables on the net and many of them don't involve much outlay

Oh, great. Really, the truth is somewhere in the middle, then? What's the evidence. Any competent cable for a given application had better sound just like any other competent cable for a given application.

Of course wire can affect a system, if you don't have any, it doesn't work. If you have competent wiring, it works. If you have some strange wire that isn't quite competent, you may get some EQ or level shifts, or something like that.

My message? If anything DOES sound different than a minimum-grade cable that is competent for the application, it's broken.

Your evidence?

How about the fact that, for half a century or more, every blind test has backed this up?

With cables, known measurable differences that should have an effect on the sound, often do - present this difference to people in a blind test, and some can pass the test.

With cables, known measurable differences that should not have an effect on the sound, and immeasurable/imagined differences that cannot have an effect on the sound, never do - present such a "difference" to people in a blind listening test, and they fail to pass the test any more than they would if they were answering at random.


You can't prove 100% that two things sound the same, but you can easily prove that they sound different (if they do). Pick two "competent" cables, prove they sound different in a statistically significant double blind test, and you'll go down in history as the first person to do so!

Cheers,
David.

No, no one has said that cables can't possibly affect the sound of a system.

THese strawman arguments are as tiresome as they are pervasive. And shame on those who keep them in circulation.




The truth is that for pathological situations -- which can well occur if one dabbles in the peculiar design philosophies if 'high end' amps and cables -- cabling could make a difference. But for the the vast majority of situations -- and one might argue, for all situations where the component design is competent --
cabling won't make a sonic difference if you use good RCL characeristics.





Blind cable tests have been done, more than once. GUess what the outcome was.

I'm a sort-of scientist (MD) with special certification in Physics. If someone can discount the two articles at the bottom of this post, I would love to hear the argument. Honestly, if I believed there was a possibillity that my Klipsch Image IEMs would sound better if my Cowon iAudio7 were connected to my RSA Hornet with a $200 interconnect I would be the first in line to spend the money. My purest joy in life is music.

I'm not being rhetorical. I have little experience in this realm and am new to DAPs/IEMs/hedphone amps. The scientist in me simply balks at the idea of superlative interconnects. Change my mind.

http://sound.westhost.com/cables.htm
http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf

Well, the first is far too wordy for me to waste my time on, but the second appears to be right-on, and I think that all regular posters here at HA will agree with me on that.

> I'm a sort-of scientist (MD) with special certification in Physics. If someone
> can discount the two articles at the bottom of this post, I would love to hear
> the argument.

OK, I'll have a go while my music library is being restored from backup (don't ask).

As pdq says, the first is a bit wordy and wanders. The second is a bit wonky in some of the details but is essentially correct as far it goes. When a person hears sound this involves both the sound impinging on the ears and what is going on in the brain between the ears. Although the two articles you cite are largely correct they concentrate on the former rather than the whole experience.

Indeed exotic audiophile cables do not change the sound impinging on the ears sufficiently to be audible using normal equipment. But they can change what is going on between the ears so that an audiophile receiving the normal cues (i.e. not blinded) perceives a better sound with high-performance, extensively researched, impressive looking, expensive audiophile cables compared to obviously inadequate cheap ordinary wire.

A couple of examples to back this up. An oft-cited example on the internet of how other factors apart from the sound impinging the ears is involved in perceiving sound is the the McGurk effect:

http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_english.html

There have been a substantial number of challenges over the 30 year life of the audiophile sector to demonstrate under blind conditions the ability to hear difference in the sound of amplifiers, cables, digital and the like. The many audiophiles that take the tests are baffled by their failure when they know they can hear difference but few have the grace to honestly report what happened in the test (it requires a pretty bigoted outlook to be an audiophile in the first place). One of the few, performing a preliminary test before going off to collect Randi's million dollars, was Mike Lavigne:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread....00#post12255000

note that during the failed the test he was hearing clear differences.

So can you believe in cables in the same way as some of your patients believe in homeopathy?

Agreed, which is why I rarely buy hifi new. I paid $1800 for the speakers. I love their sound (or coloration, distortion, sonic signature, whatever).

Your nihilism is noted.

Wire's job is to transmit a signal without changing it.

Ergo, if a wire changes the signal, it's broken.

It is trivially shown that minimum-grade competent cable absolutely, irrevocably carries a signal with all noise sources below the known, established thresholds of human hearing.

Therefore, one can make the assertion from hard measurement, established science, and simple, incontrovertable logic. There is no better evidence available in this universe.

Now, different cables may provoke different responses in equipment. Fix the equipment. Different cables may create rolloff or emphasis, in which case if you like that particular malfunction of the cable, build yourself a circuit to do the same thing under concious, deliberate control. Et cetera.

> Wire's job is to transmit a signal without changing it.

Not audiophile wire. As a luxury product its primary job is to fulfill the same function as other luxury products.

> Ergo, if a wire changes the signal, it's broken.

Not necessarily for audiophile wire. But granted for wire for more technical purposes.

> It is trivially shown that minimum-grade competent cable absolutely,
> irrevocably carries a signal with all noise sources below the known,
> established thresholds of human hearing.

Indeed but it is also trivially shown that an audiophile's perception of sound is influenced by their knowledge of the equipment. Do you dispute that an audiophile perceives the same sound from a fancy audiophile cable as a cheap ordinary cable?

> Therefore, one can make the assertion from hard measurement, established
> science, and simple, incontrovertable logic. There is no better evidence
> available in this universe.

Indeed but you are only applying this to part of the problem. Namely, the sound that impinges on the ears and ignoring what goes on between the ears. Your established science has learnt a fair bit about the latter. Just because you and I cannot hear the difference between audiophile wire and ordinary wire does not mean that audiophiles cannot regardless of whether their stated reasons are nonsense or not.

Reducing the issue to the core, audiophiles expose two inefficient/unreasonable behaviours:

1) Investing an insanely high amount of resources (financial) to create an effect, which they - with the right mindset - as well create themselves - be it with pure metaprogramming or/and with much cheaper external aids (i.e. room decoration - any external stuff which changes the atmosphere of the "listening experience"... aesthetics DO matter here!). Its like investing 50.000 $ to get something, which you can as well get for like 500 $.

2) Dishonesty: "The cable performs different, not my mind". This is a direct consequence of "1)" - since they became dependent on creating the desired effect via placebo, it can only work by believing in the lie - they lose the option of being honest to themselves.

My goodness. Yes, fancy red-and-gold wires are a nice placebo.

The changes happen cognatively. Placebos work. Is that your point? What do you define as "hear", in this case? Are you playing semantics, or are you arguing for golden-eardom. If you are arguing for golden-eardom, physics has some very bad news for you, I fear.

There is no change to what reaches the ears, unless one or the other wire is broken. It really is that simple. And, no, this has nothing to do with hearing the differences. Machines can measure down to below the noise level of the atmosphere at the eardrum, and they do measure that accurately.

And, as far as placebos, audiophiles are no different than the rest of us.

> The changes happen cognatively. Placebos work. Is that your point?

It depends what you are lumping under the umbrella placebo since it is not a word that would usually be used to describe the brains activity when processing the information received at the ears along with other information the brain possesses at the time.

> Are you playing semantics, or are you arguing for golden-eardom. If you are
> arguing for golden-eardom, physics has some very bad news for you, I fear.

I was trying to point out that your statements were insufficient and to a degree misleading because you were not considering audiophile wire in the context of audiophiles using them to listen to music reproduced on their audiophile stereos. Whether this is an argument for golden-eardom depends on what one understands golden-eardom to mean. Yes if it means some audiophiles can perceive "better" sound with audiophile wire compared to non-audiophile wire under normal listening conditions. But no for listening under abnormal blind conditions.

> And, as far as placebos, audiophiles are no different than the rest of us.

Not necessarily when it comes to audiophile matters. The brain draws on a range factors such as what is being seen and what has happened in the past in order to make sense of the sound impinging on the ears. If we consider my previous two examples, the McGurk effect relies on a learned linking of a lip movement and a sound. It does not work for those with languages that do not commonly use the sound. For Mike Lavigne, whatever was going on in his head was leading him to perceive differences between wires during a blind test. Are you claiming that you would also be perceiving the same differences under these conditions because I know I would not not.

The effectiveness of particular placebos depends on the person and their experiences and beliefs. People with very different experiences and beliefs in a particular area are not going to react in the same way to placebos in this area. Your statement is only correct if interpreted to mean that nobody is immune from placebos in general.

There was an interesting article which relates to the cable thing in The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20.../humanbehaviour.

It basically says that when a person believes something has a higher monetary value than something else, the thing with the higher value will bring more pleasure. They use the example of a wine test where subjects were given a "$10" per bottle wine and then a "$90" bottle. The wines were the exact same. However, the people prefered the $90 wine. The interesting thing in the article is this bit: "brain scans showed increased activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and its surrounding area, the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, in the frontal lobes [when drinking the $90 wine]. I'm pretty sceptical about the merits of this kind of brain imaging research, but I will mention that the orbitofrontal cortex has previously been activated in studies looking at ratings of pleasantness of music and smells."

So these cable people are enjoying their music more, maybe the cables were worth the price after all. Which reminds me of this snakeoil: http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicate...e/dp/B000I1X6PM. Some of the reviews are pretty funny.

That is my experience, and that is what the literature indicates. We're all human. We may react differently to the same placebo, but that's about it.

As to "golden-ears", sorry, hearing any difference sighted is absolutely, completely, and utterly meaningless, in scientific terms. Such tests are not testable, verifiable, and in particular they are not at all falsifiable. Yes, knowing you are listening to the pretty warm-colored cables will change your perception. No, this is in no way due to how the cables SOUND, unless you can DBT them.

You seem to be prone to very absolute statements (see the quote above) while being unaware of the most basic knowlege that psychology has shown regarding human perception.

You continue to completely fail to get the point, misunderstanding entire paragraphs. Blinded by science :-) Perhaps you should consider, that maybe you're completely on the wrong track, giving replies to posts which were never written in this thread. For someone being so "scientific", you're interpreting quite a lot :-) It's also worth mentioning, that you are acting in a strongly defensive introverted role - thats not a moral rating... just an observation which may be a valueable hint to whats going on with you.

Perhaps, then, rather than engage in unsupported insult, you could provide some substance to your input?

I've read down this thread, and seen a great deal of overcomplication of a very simple matter. So, I think it's time we get back to basics and understand what really happens with hardware and in listening tests.

Would you like to make some testable, verifiable claims? Certainly the ones I'm making have been confirmed time and time again, in the formal literature.

Yes..what was going on *in his head*. Not a change in the audio stimulus.



It's quite possible you would think you were hearing difference. If you were told or led to believe in advance that one was going to be better than another, it's quite possible you'd report just that.





And...so what? Yes, no two delusions are necessarily identical.

One can perform a 'phantom switch' test (try it on an audiophile, they won't necessarily do any better than a layman) where literally NOTHING about the stimulus is changed, not hardware or the software. The listener doesn't know it, but all that is changed is the visual or verbal information given about the source. Yet reports of 'perceived' difference ranging from subtle to vast are not uncommon. This is pure subjectivity, it isn't the stimulus quality changing in any real way (much less getting 'better' or 'worse'). What's changing are neuron firing patterns in the brain.

It's worth mentioning that your recent postings read like a crackpot's stew of fact and psychobabble. Perhaps if I engage in some 'metaprogramming' I can defeat the 'defensive introversion' that is holding me back from true enlightenment?

You consider the part, that listening in practice requires a LISTENER with a MIND which modifies the signal ALWAYS, an "overcomplication"? What stops you from understanding what honestguv is pointing out, is a strongly externalistic mindset (lol). He is pointing out, that the listening experience in practice, does not just depend on some matter arranging in soundwaves and reaching a sensor which records it - it also depends on what happens afterwards. There is no music and no sound without mind. Thats part of "listening to music". (An analogy would be: The experience of eating dinner, doesn't just depend on whats in the dish itself). He isn't questioning that the signal in the cable isn't changed significantly.... he is questioning that understanding the entire topic, can be achieved by just looking at the external aspect. Stuff like intentions, purposes, efficiency, etc.... the endresult which reaches the consciousness which listens to the sound in practice... is not just an externalistic matter. I dont know about you, but i and most other people do not listen to music specifically because of "what happens in the cable, the speaker, etc"... i listen to music because of the end result which reaches my consciousness.... and that endresult depends on both, the hardware, and "how" i process the data which reaches my ears. Or to put it really simple - he is stating that "listening to music" depends on external factors, internal factors and the interactions between both. Unless you're trying to push a "mind doesn't exist" XOR "reality doesn't exist" worldview, his point doesn't need a "scientific test" because its almost a truism. He isn't engaging in a purely "scientific discussion" - he is looking at all aspects of the topic. The reason why you failed to notice that is because you were/are stuck in tunnel-view.

- Lyx

P.S.: krabapple put on ignore. So you can as well spare your time and effort in trying to establish a flamewar with me.

P.S.2.: To escalate honestguvs argument (so that it becomes more obvious to..... externalists): First we establish a purpose/goal - something which we want to achieve. In this example, its that we desire the endresult/listening experience which reaches "I" to have certain "qualities". For this to be a "goal", the current state needs to be different to this goal (so, we are dissatistied with how our current listening experience is like). So, we now have a current state, and a goal state..... whats left is how to get from current state to that goal state - we need to find an EFFICIENT "method" (or a mix of methods) to achieve that goal-state. We can modify the external factors... like speaker-quality, DSPs, cabling, etc..... so that we dont need to modify how we process the data in our mind. Or we could create the goal state by not changing external factors at all and only changing the processing done in our mind (in laymans terms: "imagine it"). We could also do a mix of both. Or we could start doing more complicated stuff with the interaction between internal and external.... or we could create the goal state by lying to ourself.... i.e. asuming that the external factors changed (better cable) while in truth just changing how we process the data in our mind. With all those options/methods, we can reach the desired goal state! Point. Morals and ideology dont change this simple fact - we can create the desired goal state with any of those options. What those options differ in, isn't the reached goal-state, but their EFFICIENCY....i.e. invested resources (COST) and sideeffects (i.e. disadvantages). For example, investing in quality equipment typically has a high one-off cost, but very low running costs and almost no bad sideeffects. Doing it via imagination only has a very low one-off cost, but high running costs (constant effort to keep up the imagination). Doing it via belief/placebo MAY have very extremely high one-off costs, and has high sideeffects (losing the option of being honest to oneself). Interestingly, the in this case usually most efficient option, is a mix.... investing in above-average equipment (without going for high-quality equipment), improving aesthetics (room decoration, equipment design) and adding a little bit of imagination (the "mood") typically results in the most bang for the buck. Of course, looking at the topic from this angle calls into question the externalistic morale that only external things are "true/exist" and that stuff in mind is "false/virtual".... but well, fuck that.

Not to be overly pedantic, but the MIND modifies nothing. Clearly not the "signal" as you use the word.

Perhaps his problem is the same as mine. This board (last time I checked) is a meeting place for discusson by objectivists. What you are describing is clearly subjective experience, Something which is not testable, verifiable, and (I though) outside the terms of service of this board.

You appear to me to be attempting to argue in subjective terms while Woodinville, Krabapple, et al. are attempting to make an objective argument.
Clearly this will never be resolved while the two parties fight on different battlefields.


I thought that discussion on the (possible) change in signal and questions of its perceptibility in double blind tests was the entire point.

I see nowhere a dispute (of what appears to be your core contention) that the listeners mind(set) influences their perception. Your constant banging on that drum seems to be bordering on a straw man argument.
Clearly if the only difference between two cables is aesthetic a blind test has no chance of affecting the mind(set) of the listener.

No. I am neither an objectivist nor a subjectivist - i am something else, which actually REJECTS the idea that there are such properties as "objective" and "subjective" (so, i reject BOTH camps *invidually*). My mindset is a synthesis of the true aspects of both camps, while at the same time claiming the false asumptions of both camps to be void. To reduce it to the core: Externalists/Objectivists implicitely claim external stuff to be true and internal stuff to be false. Subjectivists implicitely claim internal stuff to be true and external stuff to be false. I reject both mindsets and claim that both, external stuff and internal stuff "is", and that truth is something else which is not tied to a LOCATION.

No, objectivists explicitly claim that external "stuff" is verifiable and internal "stuff" is subjective and thus outside the realm of objective discussion.
This is not the battle you appear to wish it was.
It is not a false distinction to draw such a line, no matter how hard you wish to believe your "third way" is superior and above the fray.

Not necessarily a contradiction because its not mutually exclusive (though, "inconsistent" it is - and this inconsistency is what earlier i called "lying" and hypocritical).

Clearly a contradiction. You accused the objectivist position as holding subjective experience to be false.
The objectivist position make no such claim. It claims subjective experience is just that, subjective, and outside the realm of objective discussion.
What I see as lying and hypocritical is your attempts to pick fights which are not there and to continue to make straw man arguments.

Let me repeat that - you reject that it is possible to "say A, but imply B", "claim to mean A, while actually meaning B", "claim do to A, and then do B".... in other words, you claim that lies do not exist? WTF? Let me guess.... you also check the honesty of someone, by simply asking him about it? Isn't that a little bit naive and "unscientific"? Truely, honest and logical discussion with you is hopeless, bye.

You are coming across (to me) as a master of putting words in other people's mouths. Defending your position by attacking your personal view of other people's implications while ignoring their explicit statements is neither logical not honest.

A, i see - so now you are at the point where people similiar to you always land when confronted with themselves.... starting to attack the morality of what the messenger does as well as the packaging of the message, while completely stopping to analyze the validity of the messages content -> Truth isn't the primary discussion criteria anymore... Denial mode.


Heh, your "explicit argument" explicitely left out the an NECESSARY claim which is needed for your post to make any sense relative to my post, at all. So, without adding that missing part, your entire post would be pointless..... would you prefer me to simply answer to your post by just saying "your post makes no sense, because it leaves out the primary connection to my post, which was the context of your reply"? Thats like saying "You're dishonest and unlogical because you fixed my unlogical statement by adding the missing connective so that it makes any semantic sense at all." ..... funny...... but someway also a bit boring.....

So everybody in this thread agrees that interconnects, given a minimum quality grade, do not produce changes above the human threshold of hearing so as to affect the aural-neural pathways of the brain, and therefore can all be considered to bear no difference from each other, and this can be easily proven in a double-blind test;

but when people do hear differences in claimed testing environments that somehow fail the DB criteria, the processed sound is affected by non-aural-neural pathways that receive input from what the listeners' minds know about the audiophility and/or common-gradeability of the cables they are listening to....

------------

Oh and honestly, I thought honestguv's post about audiophile placebo was brilliant satire until he clarified his position. Oh well.

IMO, the main flaw in honestguvs (clarified) argument is, that he does not pay enough attention to two aspects: 1) The reference used for rating efficiency, 2) Sideeffects/disadvantages of dishonesty

If i understood him right, he is saying that if someone has lots of cash, and expensive interconnects give them what they want (via placebo), then the interconnects were "worth their price". "Worth their price" compared to WHAT? Value needs a reference to make any sense. So, you need to compare it to how efficient other options are. If some other method could as well give them what they want, but at MUCH lower cost, then how can those expensive interconnects be "worth their price"? That sounds more like they're - including their suggested effect - massively overpriced.

Getting into more detail about the disadvantages of dishonesty would require an entire additional discussion, so i'll not get further into this.

What honestguv is correct about, is that those expensive interconnects PRODUCTS (including their marketing) do "give" the effect which they are claiming via placebo - so, if the customer is willing to believe, they do what they claim. What he leaves out however, is that what they give (the "endresult") is available at MUCH lower price via other options, and that the requirement to lie is an additional cost, which is often underestimated.

In my opinion, it's worth spending some money for good interconnects if one has a good system, that will show the difference between cables.

With my Yamaha reciever and JBL LX2001 there was hardly a difference between 150$ and a stock interconnect. But, when I switched to B&W 685 and connected it to NAD 352, and audible difference was heard. The difference really isn't that drastic like changing speakers or componets, but, there is a difference.

I think that if one has a 5000$ system, there is worth spending additional 500$ for cables. But, if you own a 500$ system, it just isn't worth it.

Sometimes thou, supplied interconnects are really really bad, and cheap 10$ interconnect will surely make a difference. And, that really isn't that much.

Your ABX results please, especially if you wish to continue posting on this forum.

Who cares about ABX?

On my US$9,990 system with vacuum tubes (the ones that take 2 hours to warm up) and electrostatic membrane hypertechnology (a derivative of the Van der Graaff generator), I splurged $500 per interconnect that needed to be changed... wow, the sound became sparklingly clear, like fine Bordeaux wine! The mids could breathe better, like a patient undergoing treatment in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and the lows were foot-tappity and drum attacks were not muddy, like when you clean the clay off archaeological artifacts.

All in a day's work.

I think you would have found that if you hadn't been a cheapskate and spent US$10,000 on your system from day one there would have been no need for splurging.

I'm not going to go post-modern on your ass, @soap, but I think this is a bit simplified, and unnecessarily pessimistic.

First, I found very illuminating a distinction made by John Searle, a rather common-sense philosopher. He distinguishes between the epistemologically subjective and the ontologically subjective.

A simple example, and I hope a reasonable one, is cooking. If we're epistemologically objective, we measure all the ingredients; e. subjectively, we toss in what we think might be right, and adjust by tasting.

However, the taste of the food is ontologically subjective: how it tastes is my own personal experience, or your own personal experience, and there's no way to measure it with instruments. Same with the sound of music ©.

However, we can be reasonably objective (or maybe, intersubjectively verifiable, which will do), about ontologically subjective experiences. Ways to do this are one of the great achievements of the later 20th century, and one classic method is the ABX test. By this, and similar methods, we can talk about ontologically subjective experiences in a public and disciplined way. It's this way that we can say, for example, that lossy coding throws away a lot of information, but it doesn't matter because most (or all) people can't hear the difference.

It's convenient if it's possible to find objective measurements that act as a surrogate for ontologically subjective experience, because instruments are cheaper to use and easier to manage than humans. So we can now say that most people over 35 will not complain of a loss of sparkle, or some such, if the signal is lowpassed at 17 kHz, and so developers don't have to gather a testing panel of old farts like me every time they make a change, but what matters finally is the subjective experience of sparkle, or whatever one might call it.

There's a very good example in photographic lens and emulsion design of the way, from the 1960s on, disciplined study of subjective experience changed the performance criteria for lens and film designers.

As I understand it, objectivism in audio means relying on measurable quantities, and I'd taken it that the HA insistence on blind testing, or other disciplined and reproducible (?sp) results, is something rather different, and more sophisticated.

> Oh and honestly, I thought honestguv's post about audiophile placebo was
> brilliant satire until he clarified his position. Oh well.

No satire. I was simply debating on the side of audiophile cables.

To clarify my view, for what it is worth, the anecdotal evidence is strong (i.e. said and done by audiophiles, casual tests) that consuming audiophiles who have invested a lot of their sense of worth in being audiophiles perceive a better sound from some cables compared to others. There are some weasel words in there because one obviously cannot put any faith in the public statements of those involved with the supply side (i.e. distributors, audiophile publications and the like) or the more casual audiophile with more interest in posting on the web than building an emotional relationship with audiophile hardware.

The mechanisms that influence the perception of sound have been, and continue to be, studied following the scientific method. That is, by measurement to confirm hypotheses that can be used to successfully predict the outcome of future experiments. The McGurk effect is an example I linked to. Someone else linked to a wine tasting experiment which would be a good template for an experiment to study audiophile's perception of audiophile cables to add to the mainly casual tests where audiophiles thought cables were swapped when they were not and reported the better sound tracking what they believed to be the audiophile cable. Clearly, the fact that those with the strongest interest in audiophile cables would probably pay good money to prevent public scientific studies, audiophile cables being luxury products of effectively zero interest outside the audiophile world and that those with a basic knowledge of psychoacoustics would not see anything anomalous in what audiophiles report perceiving means that not many, if any, studies are going to take place in psychoacoustic labs.

What surprised me was that some here would appear to believe that listening blind is valid and normal sighted listening is not (e.g. what is heard with the eyes shut in the McGurk effect is in some way right and what is heard with them open is wrong) and that science cannot be used to measure and predict what audiophiles perceive. Given that such people claim to be part of my tribe of rational scientific thought it is hard to resist teasing them (tests are not testable?) unlike audiophiles who believe in magic and are not part of my tribe. I am pleased I resisted. Well almost.

I thought the prediction of audiophile perceptions belongs to a rather different realm of science.

The reason why so many people emphasise the DBT... isn't it because we already know (even from the case study of audiophile opinion) that we cannot trust our hearing together with our sight, because we will make use of both to suit our preconceived notions (let's not shift the blame to our brains when we don't have to, shall we?)?

Your last paragraph contradicts your 2nd last paragraph. There is a reason why audiophiles detest the DBT. They ALWAYS fail it when they will EASILY pass the same test with their eyes wide open.

Why is that?

See the terms of service, especially #8.