Ah, the invisible instrument according to a recent post. You know, lacking any HF information localizing you with that beast would have been impossible for the audience.
Is Psychoacoustics a load of rubbish
Is Psychoacoustics a load of rubbish or can we learn something from it?
The people who hear cable differences here seem to dismiss Psychoacoustics as a factor in their hearing. "I expected it to sound better but it didn't", seems a good enough reason for them to conclude that Psychoacoustics somehow does not apply to them.
Psychoacoustics does apply to everyone, and it offers an explaination of why DBTs fail to support some claims.
If you say that because of stress the DBT may obscure really low level differences, you are just confirming the fact that the mind can affect what we hear or don't hear.
SOME subjectivists become strangely obsessed with hardware because of their of their faulty (missing data) software.
Grab Psychoacoustics and run with it. Happy listening to all
Is Psychoacoustics a load of rubbish or can we learn something from it?
The people who hear cable differences here seem to dismiss Psychoacoustics as a factor in their hearing. "I expected it to sound better but it didn't", seems a good enough reason for them to conclude that Psychoacoustics somehow does not apply to them.
Psychoacoustics does apply to everyone, and it offers an explaination of why DBTs fail to support some claims.
If you say that because of stress the DBT may obscure really low level differences, you are just confirming the fact that the mind can affect what we hear or don't hear.
SOME subjectivists become strangely obsessed with hardware because of their of their faulty (missing data) software.
Grab Psychoacoustics and run with it. Happy listening to all
No, but dualistic reasoning meets the criteria. Who dismisses psychoacoustics in principle as opposed to the methodology of some practitioners?
I certainly subscribe to that idea. No proof for you thou.
The information required for good imaging and sound stage has a lot to do with the preservation of phase information and happens over the whole spectrum. I no longer use the term detail, but use "downward dynamic range", the ability of a system to pass information that resides WAY down in the presence of much louder stuff.
dave
He proved black holes couldn't exist. Now we are taking pictures of them with The Hubble.
dave
Hey Terry J, thanks for listening. I'm afraid the "girls" are too busy gossiping about cable minutia to ever actually do anything. There will never be any actual tests to come out of threads like these. Gossip and bickering are sooo much more fun.
I'm not in either camp. I test and listen. Both paths are valid. At least the subjectivists have an advantage in that their goal is for it to "sound good", however they get there. The objectivists are less flexible. Not to say they aren't successful, but they have a harder road - even if they don't know it.
Any sort of survey of systems would be nice, either objective or subjective. I admire clubs like Melaudia in France who go around and listen to many different systems and report on them. All subjective stuff, but at least they are comparing many different systems and approaches. And over many years. Is there anyone in North America or Australia doing the same? Perhaps the distances are too vast.
I'm not in either camp. I test and listen. Both paths are valid. At least the subjectivists have an advantage in that their goal is for it to "sound good", however they get there. The objectivists are less flexible. Not to say they aren't successful, but they have a harder road - even if they don't know it.
Any sort of survey of systems would be nice, either objective or subjective. I admire clubs like Melaudia in France who go around and listen to many different systems and report on them. All subjective stuff, but at least they are comparing many different systems and approaches. And over many years. Is there anyone in North America or Australia doing the same? Perhaps the distances are too vast.
I was actually refering to his attitude,to admit he was wrong where he was wrong.
I agree.It would be disastrous if our understanding for many things not only physics stoped growing.But more disastrous is when efforts are abandoned because "there is nothing else" to learn.....
Don't know who said this but it is so true: One must know remarkably much to realise how little he knows. I also knew everything once but that were many years ago.
Don't know who said this but it is so true: One must know remarkably much to realise how little he knows. I also knew everything once but that were many years ago.
Hey Andre,credit me for saying something good from time to time
Who's side are you on?
heheheAndre Visser:
There are now two eyebrow-shaped dints in my ceiling after reading this...
Ouch, that must hurt.
Don't think so, many that I know can do it.
I've done many comparative tests, including some blind, to test new ideas and decide what work best for me at least. Cables is only a small part of that though. I will state my experiences only for the purpose of trying to learn from other peoples experiences too. It is your choice what you do with that. I'm not trying to convince anybody that I'm right, everything I've said is based on my testing unless otherwise stated, not on what I believe to be true or read from somewhere else. My listening tests have proven many of my beliefs wrong in the past, including cables
, so I've learned to be slow to dismiss something just because I can't see how it can have an influence.If that is so, I guess we would still have to be happy with the 'perfect' sound of CD Players from the 80's. This is a DIY forum, I guess there will be other forums for those who know everything.
Partly so yes, but I can hear the position of a drum also.
Low level detail are things like ambience, a finger touching a string, hearing other harmonics within the fundamental note, decay of a note, stage focus and many more.
High level detail get attenuated, low level detail tend to get lost.
Our ability to recreate a soundfield from a good stereo system, sound localisation are dependent on very accurate timing of signals, some say 1uS differences are detectable, small level differences between channels. Our ablility to track a low level sound even in the presence of other louder sounds.
Surely MP3 is a very good compromise, considering the data rate. Still there are detail lost that we can detect when listening on a good system.
No it is not irrelevant if you want to find the truth. Have you ever tried a blind test with some others watching? It can have a large influence on your listening abilities if you are not experienced because your mind is busy with other thoughts than concentrating on what you 'hear'. Listening on an unknown system to unknown music is also a large handicap. (This is my opinion, based on my experience.) To top it all, some tests ignore the results of the best and worst listeners.
I still catch myself sometimes concentrating on 'listening for differences' rather than the music, even when testing by myself.
I've said many times before, I don't have a problem with blind testing if done correctly.
Hey Andre,credit me for saying something good from time to time
I'm on the searching side, sounds like you are too.
Panicos K:
As far as the matter of cables making an audible difference is concerned, it's not a subjective matter - it's an objective one. The fundamental assertion is that differences in design and construction of cables lead to complex audible effects on the signal. That's a claim to an objective fact and, as such, it's scientifically evaluable. When people hide behind subjectivity (it seems to me, in my experience, etc...) they are effectively putting the lie to the claim, and it's important to recognise that. And, when their arguments consist of such subjective terms and claims, they have to recognise that without objective evidence and clear reason, they're basically putting themselves in the same spot Einstein did wrt black holes.
rdf:
As to 'citations' - go back a page or two to where I (and someone else) linked to the page on the St Andrews uni website discussing the physics of cables (you know, their real properties, as opposed to the made-up ones). Plenty of proof there that cables don't differ audibly and, where they differ, the result even if it was audible would simply be a microscopic rolloff at 20kHz. That includes the complex impedance, skin effect and group delay properties of a cable.
I would also point out that those claiming complex audible differences haven't cited any such similarly reasoned or credible evidence or proof that they are right. Sure, they bandy about various technical terms in a desperate attempt to show some scientific credibility, but every time someone says 'skin effect' or 'resonance' or 'dielectric absorption' they just show their ignorance and their unwillingness to qustion themselves.
So I suppose you're sitting on the fence on this issue? Your'e kind of cable agnostic? Because agnosticism is a silly position to claim to hold. Science shows that there are no known electrical properties of a normal non-faulty cable that could result in audible differences beyond mere attenuation (power-loss) of the signal. Read any EE text and see for yourself. Meanwhile, the unsupported claim is repeatedly made that complex audible differences are possible and detectable - and yet there is no credible objective evidence to support these claims! Nothing more than hearsay and anecdote. Further more, the pro-difference advocates claim that science can't refute their claims to scientific fact - lol! Eg, DBT isn't applicable, etc...
This topic isn't about complex audible differences in cables - they don't exist nor could they. This is about people fooling themselves into believing they exist and refusing to question their own experiences, even when science shows that human perception is remarkably easily fooled, even by oneself. It's about a cable industry that cynically exploits that fact and a hifi press that perpetuates the lie that it itself helped propagate.
Einstein was forced to admit he was wrong about black holes. Of course, he wasn't so bone-headed as to argue with objective scientific evidence or logical reasoning but it took a while for scientists to confirm the existance of black holes. Likewise the expanding universe. My point, though, is that if someone as smart as Einstein can fall prey to assumptions - however reasonable - so can the rest of us. Me included. I present my arguments in a reasoned form, not merely as opinion. That's so that people can evaluate what I say and respond appropriately. When someone says 'oh, in my experience, X seems to be the case' without explanation or evidence to support that statement - as happens a lot in threads discussing subjective matters - it's impossible to evaluate.
As far as the matter of cables making an audible difference is concerned, it's not a subjective matter - it's an objective one. The fundamental assertion is that differences in design and construction of cables lead to complex audible effects on the signal. That's a claim to an objective fact and, as such, it's scientifically evaluable. When people hide behind subjectivity (it seems to me, in my experience, etc...) they are effectively putting the lie to the claim, and it's important to recognise that. And, when their arguments consist of such subjective terms and claims, they have to recognise that without objective evidence and clear reason, they're basically putting themselves in the same spot Einstein did wrt black holes.
rdf:
I'm not sure why a conviction that cables are audibly neutral in function should make your eyebrows hit the ceiling. You must surely have encountered this position before? I have never heard a claim that different 'uses' of music each have, or require, an optimum cable diameter before. Even in cable discussion threads I've read in the past. That - and the fact that the claim is patently absurd - is why my eyebrows hit the ceiling.
As to 'citations' - go back a page or two to where I (and someone else) linked to the page on the St Andrews uni website discussing the physics of cables (you know, their real properties, as opposed to the made-up ones). Plenty of proof there that cables don't differ audibly and, where they differ, the result even if it was audible would simply be a microscopic rolloff at 20kHz. That includes the complex impedance, skin effect and group delay properties of a cable.
I would also point out that those claiming complex audible differences haven't cited any such similarly reasoned or credible evidence or proof that they are right. Sure, they bandy about various technical terms in a desperate attempt to show some scientific credibility, but every time someone says 'skin effect' or 'resonance' or 'dielectric absorption' they just show their ignorance and their unwillingness to qustion themselves.
So I suppose you're sitting on the fence on this issue? Your'e kind of cable agnostic? Because agnosticism is a silly position to claim to hold. Science shows that there are no known electrical properties of a normal non-faulty cable that could result in audible differences beyond mere attenuation (power-loss) of the signal. Read any EE text and see for yourself. Meanwhile, the unsupported claim is repeatedly made that complex audible differences are possible and detectable - and yet there is no credible objective evidence to support these claims! Nothing more than hearsay and anecdote. Further more, the pro-difference advocates claim that science can't refute their claims to scientific fact - lol! Eg, DBT isn't applicable, etc...
This topic isn't about complex audible differences in cables - they don't exist nor could they. This is about people fooling themselves into believing they exist and refusing to question their own experiences, even when science shows that human perception is remarkably easily fooled, even by oneself. It's about a cable industry that cynically exploits that fact and a hifi press that perpetuates the lie that it itself helped propagate.
I "believe" that being subjective means you are thinking,experimenting,trying to learn, and that's healthy.
To deny that there is anything else to learn(speaking about cable differences now) gives a miserable picture of some,who simply hide behind someone else's inventions even like RLC parameters,and who don't think for some reason to even try and see if there is something else there.And as if this is not enough,they ask subjectivists for proof.The proof for the subjectivist is the ability of his hearing(something that you don't accept of course).Ironically though,you are ready to accept,the possible failure of a subjectivist's hearing ability,as proof that differences do not exist.That's really tragic.
Very tragic indeed.
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I quite agree. I rely on what I hear and trust that as my point of reference. I could care less what someone else is able to achieve or not achieve, or what science says that I should not be able to hear. It is my system, my ears and my music. I want it to sound as close to my own experiences with live unamplified music. That will be different for everyone, so why should I be restrained to a "perceived accuracy"?
I can not speak for all, but in the end it is my ears and mind that I have satisfy, no one else's. Audio is a personal thing and as such I will continue to do as I have since I found what DIY allows me to achieve in my system.
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