It's official: all cables sound the same!

[janneman]

Finally a Hi-Fi glossy did a blind listening test on cables. Following cables sets (both interlink and speaker) were tested (set price in UKP, multiply roughly by 2 to get US $, in brackets):

Nordost (UKP 6500), Siltech (UKP 7700), Stereovox (UKP 10300), Audience (UKP 2000), Chord (UKP 1650) and QED (UKP 120).

Blind test, three listeners, using 3 separate pieces of music each trial.

They did a clever setup: the first cable set was by definition rated 10 points, so each following one had to be rated more or less than 10, better or worse, as to preference rather than specific attributes. A neat way to assess preferences without going into the numbers fight.
Sounds pretty well thought out and logical, right? Wait till you see the results and what they did with it...

Below are the results in raw data. Now, some of you will tell me this is copyrighted material. I know. I looked up this issue, and it appears that it is accepted practice to quote some limited parts from an article with the sole purpose to facilitate discussing the issue and with full acknowledgment of rights, and without any commercial purpose. So here goes:

The table below is from Hi-Fi+ magazine, UK, Issue 34, page 22. Copyright Hi-Fi+.

What do you think of this? Hint: look at the 1st group score of the Siltech (approx US $ 15.000) and the QED (aprox US $ 240). What would you do as the editor of the magazine?

Jan Didden

[jackinnj]

well, we know what the editor won't do -- and that is to refrain from accepting advertising dollars from cable manufacturers!

[jeff mai]

Originally posted by janneman
It's official: all cables sound the same!

How can you get this conclusion?

Just because a few listeners were inconsistant in their assessment of a few cables does not mean that all cables sound the same.

[Brett]

Originally posted by jackinnj
well, we know what the editor won't do -- and that is to refrain from accepting advertising dollars from cable manufacturers!

And why should he? A simple test like this is far from definitive, yet the results were published, to the benefit of the readers, and possibly to the detriment of the manufacturers, distributors and retailers. The ones who pay most of the magazine cost. You still have freedom of choice, and can read the ads and decide if you want to buy a specific product or not.

[peace brainerd]

I am astonished - but shouldn't be - by some repsonses to this article.

There is a huge prologue to this topic in the loudspeakers forum, with a lot of the same attitude - some creeping obeisance to the hype that snake oil vendors crank out. Of course it's that manufacturers right to do such. Of course the magazine editor can do what's necessary to keep his yacht in dockage and his kids in braces. Of course each of us is free to take any of their claims to our best interests on faith and hand em our cash. Of course the chain described above, as an example of enlightened community, is dubious to say the least - but welcome to capitalism. And again, that is perfectly ok - and often entertaining to watch. But it misses the point in this case entirely.

The subject of ultra high end interconnects is a little analogous to the benefits of exercise. Long distance runners reach a point in their training of steeply diminishing returns, yet many far exceed that point. Only the most competetive marathoners will actually benefit from the bare seconds on the hour that an extra hundred mile a week will gain them, yet so many other runners still put in those extra miles - to no good end? Well, that's their business. And it's also not unreasonable for anyone to spend an extra five hundred dollars on speaker cable if it satifsfies their desire for what most would conclude to be an exceedingly diminished return. It would even be perfectly ok if that return were no more than spurious, just imaginary. No - nothing wrong here either. It's their right of course. But that doesn't matter.

It's the great gust of fresh air that a blind test like the one beginning this thread invites into the room. Shouldn't that be the point? Then why talk around it? Going to these glossies for anything more than the occasional raw data they provide is like going to Globe or Enquirer for news of the world. There's far too much crackpot animism applied to this hobby already. Wool cones sound wooly, silk domes sound silky, aluminum sounds tinny, sliver windings lend a pure and polished air to the midrange, oil filled caps give a fluid and mellow tone to the upper range, the three and a half tons of concrete I embedded my entire system in last week really ______________ (fill in the blank).

Ok, a bit of a rant. But this is a subject that always fascinates me - and dissappoints when it so often gets dodged so artlessly.

[janneman]

OK, here's the deal.

Recognizing that the first trial results fly in the face of established "belief", they decided that

" Well, the Siltech cables and the Hovland electronics obviously don't get along". Sooo, we delete the results of the first trial for the Siltech, we take the 2nd trial results for the Siltech and copy those into the 1st results table so that we get the same number of results ...

You will also note that the Nordost finished high. That makes them happy, because it is " ...an empathic justification for our faith in its abilities"

They really continue to expose their prejudice that enabled them the fraud so apparent in the first part when they say "Equally apparent (and reassuring) is the audible gap between the expensive cables and the budget QED". Well, the gap wasn't apparent until they "fixed" it!

I mean, how can anybody in his right mind take these guys serious anymore?

Jan Didden

(italics mine)

[Stuart Easson]

Hi Janneman,

I can see your point regarding the way these folks conducted the tests, their methodology is, to be very generous, poor. However all it proves is they are not capable scientists and or statisticians. It proves nothing about cables, so please don't try and use obviously bad data and bad statistics ( all theirs ) to make indefensible conclusions to the contrary of the initial hypothesis, that would make you as bad as them...

All we know for certain is that these guys are amateurs, don't repeat their mistake.

Stuart

[janneman]

Stuart,

I don't think they are amateurs, the way the set up the test seems quite professional. And since they did such a good job, I am allowed to accept their results, no? They published them, so they must stand behind them. And the results say that in the first trial ALL cables, including the lowly $250 QED , were preferred over the $15.000+ Siltechs, by all listeners with all music. Doesn't that tell me anything about cables?

But there is more:

"[the Stereovox did poor wrt their prices] "Yet having listened to them in isolation I'd consider them worthy of higher marks", and goes on a search for arguments.

There, in one fell swoop the guy invalidates his own carefull blind test and exposes his nakedness. Amateurs? This is an insult to any half-intelligent reader!

Jan Didden

[Stuart Easson]

Janneman,

I was being generous to them. Based on the excerpts you've provided the test was basically a waste of time, they already knew what they wanted to show, so the quality of the work thereafter was pretty suspect. The fact that they are willing to publish the results in no way makes them valid...Though they may indeed be willing to stand behind them, this in no way improves the quality of anything they did...

Science rests on the precept that test results are reproducible by anyone in any location, until someone else completes another series of tests and show statistically identical results, there is no certainty of any sort...which I think you already know...I think perhaps you are mad because these gentlemen are trying to sell snake oil using pseudo science...

Anyone here can figure out for themselves if all cables sound the same, they just need to perform more extreme tests...stop using 6ft of cable and start using 60 or 600ft, if there are differences and the inductance/capacitance issues are removed by driving the cables appropriately, the differences will be obvious to all, or not, as the case may be. After all we don't care about the quality of the driving and recieving equipment, we only care about the cables...my 2c worth, and you got it free...

Stuart

[janneman]

Originally posted by Stuart Easson
Janneman,

I was being generous to them. Based on the excerpts you've provided the test was basically a waste of time, they already knew what they wanted to show, so the quality of the work thereafter was pretty suspect. The fact that they are willing to publish the results in no way makes them valid...Though they may indeed be willing to stand behind them, this in no way improves the quality of anything they did...[snip]

Indeed. And there is even more in the article.

But, you know, the tone of the article, where they describe the thought process to try to do a REAL good blind test is rather sincere. I think they were honestly trying to do a good job. So what went wrong? Advertisers pressure? I don't think so, I really think that they just couldn't bring it to themselves to have all their beliefs shattered by their own test. Their beliefs won. This time, its there for all of us to see.

They could have shown all the other mags who's the real leader here, who's the one going where no one had gone before. They missed it.

Jan Didden