Too bad you can only imagine "hearing" these "witch effects" during sighted, uncontrolled listening, when you know which pretty, expensive "low distortion" cable/wire is in the system.
I thought Audiophiles didn't like the "clinical", "sterile", etc, etc. sound of ultra-low distortion???
Hmmm.....I wonder
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Oh really Andre, you're not going to run the silly "op-amps sound different" argument are you? In any case, the ABX box I used was itself ABX'd with straight cable and was found to be indistinguishable from the cable. But, hey, you'd have to trust DBTs to believe that result.
Pauses for endless circular arguments from those who don't trust DBTs,....then reaches for the popcorn.
So did it have op-amps or not?
Yes, to me op-amps do sound different, many of them can easily undo the positive properties of a good cable.
Dit you ABX the ABX box with another ABX box? No wonder it was indistinguishable.
First it was a long time ago, so memory and all that...Yes it was a shop that sold cable but it was the local Linn and Naim dealer (before the two fell out) and their stated position was that cables made little or no difference other of course than the fact that Naim amps needed a high inductance cable for stability. Come to think of it the test was in the late 1980's or early 90's so it is a little longer ago than I first recalled! The amp I remember was a middle priced Arcam, don't ask me the model. I can remember 3 of the cables used, but not the others. One was a Kimber either 4 or 8 TC I can't recall which one, another was Naim and another was early Monster Cable.
I have described the test as well as I can already sorry I simply can't recall more, not even which cable they used as the control. I do know I couldn't see what cable was being tested at any given time as the amp end of the speaker cable was screened off.
Just for fun here is what an interconnect looks like in my CLIO loop. The references is -10db top of the graph that's a THD measurement.
Rob
Any details on setup? How were you able to isolate the results to the cable (i.e. what did you compare it to?) It would take a miracle cable to generate that much distortion, unless it's that active one Stereophile tripped over a few years back.
Me neither at first, but I think I'm beginning to get the idea.
In general the subjectivists hear differences between cables. Some of them speculate about the causes for those differences, even make fairly outlandish claims for them. But those claims and speculations are quite secondary. So the issue for them is that different cables sound different.
SY on the other hand seems to make the claims and speculation a primary issue. So if/when a DBT is devised which does indeed reject the null hypothesis he wants to find out why. That's why he's been posting up ideas about measurements - both electrical and acoustic.
Yet there's a disconnect here - the general subjectivist position is not that 'cables sound different for non-mundane reasons' rather its the much more conservative 'cables sound different'. By introducing the concept 'non-mundane' he's providing himself with a fall-back position once a DBT does indeed verify the audible difference between cables. At that point he'll be able to say 'but I can measure it' so its not a non-mundane difference, I was right all along. I was only against non-mundane differences and this positive DBT test proves I've been right all along.
Depends if that claimed difference is a 'mundane difference' or a 'non-mundane' difference.
Mundane differences may be permitted not to invalidate the test.
Not the same, though they can be. If LCR is high enough to cause level or stability problems, then it's a mundane issue- the amp is incompetent or the cables are pathological. The Polk cables blowing up lots of 1980s vintage solid state units would be an archetype. For the vast majority of competent amps and non-pathological wires, the frequency response, levels, and stability are pretty much unaffected by cable swaps.
Other mundane issues include bad connectors, poor shielding (for interconnects), corroded wire... very basic stuff.
If a cable is specifically designed to be a signal processing device with chokes or transformers or what-have-you, it could certainly be audible if the series impedances are significant with respect to the load within the audio band OR if the driving amplifier was designed by a salesman. I have no idea of what the impedance of ferrite-containing cables is- I've never seen or used any, so can't estimate the effect (or lack thereof).
Please define what you mean by "transfer impedance." Transfer impedance of what, exactly, measured how? Normal orders of magnitude?
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