mwaters10 said:
Haven't you ever heard something that measured great and sounded bad?If not you have a lot to hear yet.Unless if for you,anything that measures well means it sound good too,without any listening proof.
"Mr.Stradivari,I don't know what BS you hear,but your violin measures wrong)
Later I will try to explain where the problem is with these mind games for believers and not believers.For now I can only assure you that your mind is not superior than mine.I believe you though when you say you can't hear such diferences.Part of it is biological and there is nothing you can do about it.Panicos K said:
Good comparison. In fact, a blind test was recently performed comparing a $5 mil Strad to a modern $20,000 violin. The audience of 160 trained musicians and 303 concert goers could not pick the Strad.
This does not mean that the Strad sounds bad. It means that no-one can tell the difference between a Strad and a good modern instrument.
In the same way, no-one can tell the difference between well constructed cables and very expensive audiophile cables. If they could, they would be able to prove it in a blind test.
Of course, this cannot stop any fool from claiming they can identify which particular Strad is being played as well as what the musician had for breakfast just by listening to the music ( as long as they have prior knowledge of the violin and the breakfast menu ).
You are now comparing violins with solid core speaker cables ?
You're completely missing the point.
Most musicians know how the tone of an instrument is related to the type of strings, the body of the instrument, and the way it's played by the musician.
Speaker cables are conductors of electrical signals. They are not musical instruments.
mwaters10 said:
I honestly wonder who's missing the point here.I'm glad though that you like the word I used so much.Another lost point for you I'm afraid.
What you have described about the sound of an instrument,especially famous instrument,is simply called its signature.But then this is about music not measurments,right?
Nothing wrong with referring to the tone of an instrument as it's signature. The problem is that you are relating qualities associated with musical instruments to an electrical conductor, and the simple fact is that you cannot prove that a solid core cable makes the sound exhibit a certain tone or musical quality, other than your own subjective opinion based on your own hearing limitations.
However, it is possible to hear and measure the differences in tone of different violins, so you should not compare the two things.
I have done "the test" before, and saw results. I hooked up a pair of plain old fasioned monster cable to a pair of speakers and put them on the "A" selection. Then i hooked up a pair of similar length Monster Z2 to an identicle pair of speakers on "B" selection. I did all of this in my good friend's system with him not in the room. I then went out and blindfolded him and brought him in. With me switching between the two pairs repeatedly, I asked him which pair i was playing, (wire 1 or wire 2) he was able to correctly guess the wire all 5 times. To ensure the positioning wasn't swaying the decision i switched the wires and put the z2 on the inside speakers and the plain wire on the outside pair. We got the same result. I could hear the difference between the two wire sets as well. When unplugging one and plugging in the other the difference was hard to decifer, but listening to them in instant succession it was easily discernable. It made a believer my friend and i, who were quite skeptical of the whole idea. We now purchase only higher end interconnects. We agreed that the cabe didn't seem to change the sound, but more like it got out of the way of the sound, if that makes any sense. I remember a few years ago when this was a very big debate between audioforums, then it disappeared for a while. I'm not syaing that you have to go out and get a pair of Sigma Retro Golds, (msrp$4,500) but I do think that a nice $100-$300 pair of cables could suprise you. I hear the difference and i don't think i could spend $2000 on an amp and $2000 on speakers and hook them up with $30 wire from radioshack. To me its like filling a public pool by using a city watertower, but the only thing u have running from the tower to the pool is a garden hose. It drives me nuts seeing people using lamp cord in their home theatre/stereo system, but to each his own. Just my 2 cents i guess.
BigGayAl said:
No, but fore the musician theres is a difference
Its said that a "Strad" is very difficult to play right
But a very skilled violinist can make almost any violin sound good
But Im really not so sure about the conclusion anyway
With a smaller chamber orchestra in a smaller room with much less listeners, Im sure the outcome would be very different
I think the conditions may have been wrong
mwaters10 said:
Sorry,but you were saying the same thing before I even mentioned about the violin.You are the one who has lost the point,and long ago I would say.On the other hand,I'm sure you understand very well what I and others mean,you just don't have anything else to comment on such an opinion,but the well worn out theme of "proof".If you are so concearned about proof,why don't you try find it yourself?
The studio interconnects that musicians and recording engineers use are typically studio grade cables, 1 pound per metre or so and they may use 15/20 metres of the stuff.
You can use Belden cable and just make a decent screen, and you can get yourself a cable that is comparable to most 100-200$ cable. The interconnect cable maufacturer would have you believe that you're getting some special conductor that makes the sound a certain way, but most of this is pure marketing. It's amazing that so many people fall for it or believe that they have to spend lots of money on interconnects. Rega retail a 1m cable for 80 pounds. They use Klotz cable which is 1.20p per metre. The interconnects are Neutrik.
Most guitarists use this stuff for guitar interconnects, reasonably low capcacitance cable is good enough for the studio, it appears.
So, do you really need such an expensive interconnect cable to hear what the studio recorded if they themselves were capable of recording their music with such cheap cable ?
With the Monster cable test, you should have used
the same speakers for both tests. If it's feasible that your speaker cables exhibit such differences, then you have to appreciate that the
tolerances ( which can be as much as 20% ) in the crossover components will be just as significant if not more so.
Also, the speaker wire inside most loudspeakers is similar to the stuff used in mains cable, and there is possibly hundreds of metres of 18, perhaps 24 AWG solid core cable in the inductors. So why not just use the same cable as in the loudspeaker ? You are already listening to this mains cable anyway ( if you really believe that you are listening to cables )
So just dealing with the signal route, without considering the mains supply and the hundereds of meters of cable in transformers and the power company ( apparently people can hear the difference with their 1m Kimber kettle leads ... yeh right )
Considering a typical system with high end cables ..
At the studio:
10-20 meters of £1.00/m cable between any instruments and the amplifier, 0.70p per metre cable used for singers microphone cables
In the home:
A few metres of PCB track in your CD player , a metre of component leads, then your very expensive 200$ audio interconnects, then another metre or so of component leads and hook up wire in your amplifier, then your audiophile $200 dollar speaker cable, then you may have 0.5 m of mains cable from your binding posts to LF crossover connection, then approx 50 metres of 18/24AWG solid core in the LF inductors, then a metre of mains cable to the MF / HF crossover, another fifty metres or so of solid core cable in the MF/HF section. Then you typically have stranded cable between the speaker connector and the voice coil and potentially a metre of more of solid core in the voice coil.
Amazing that all this so called cheap cable allows you to hear how good your expensive cable is, don't you think ?
Or perhaps there is nothing wrong with cheap copper cable after all ?
It is obviously clear that you think proof is unimportant.
As a designer, if I say my amplifier sounds good, and I can prove it, it makes a huge difference.
If I just say it sounds good, it means absolutely nothing.
You can't build an amplifier with feelings. All of the technologies you are dealing with in audio have proof of concept at the heart of it.
If you could never have measured the frequency response of a loudpeaker, you could never have deisgned a notch filter to damp it's free air resonance. How else do you solve any problems ?
Of course you have to proof it.
Anything else is just an opinion. I think your opinion is pointless, because I can't prove your opinion, and neither can you.
I constantly hear people say, oh my expensive wire has so much clearer midrange, crisper high, and more solid bass. Well, you spend a small fortune on that Premium wire, you either think it sounds better or you think you got screwed, and few people want to think they got screwed.
There are, logically, only three factors that matter inductance, capacitance, and resistance. In another forum someone asked a question about some specific wire and just happened to have full spec on the wire. So, I did an inductive and capacitive analysis of the wire to see just how much effect it would have on the sound.
If interested you can read it here -
http://www.avforums.com/forums/speakers/930671-good-speaker-cable-really-does-work-2.html
On page #2, post #18 he post the speaker wire spec. For the metrically challenged, 1.13mm² is very close to AWG 16ga.
Then in post #20 and #27 I analyze the wire, and on page #6, post #76 I add some additional thoughts.
The conclusion, with this wire none of the parameters have any siginficant effect within the audio range.
I didn't analyze the resistive aspect, but in another discussion, I do factor in resistance of the same wire.
In this thread in Post #12, I follow up with an analysis of the resistance using resulting current from a full 50 watt then a 100 watt surge.
http://www.avforums.com/forums/inte...43583-speaker-cable-does-make-difference.html
Notice that the percentage of loss remains the same regardless of power or current.
Again, no significant effect, and simply going from 16ga wire to 14 ga wire, reduces the resistive loss from 1.45% to 0.33%.
So, yes, definitely do use good wire, but more importantly use good wire in proportion to your other equipment. If you have a small fortune in amp and speakers, your rich, bite the bullet and spend a decent amount on your wire.
However, if you have $500 in your speakers and $500 in your amps, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to spend $500 on wire. I mean screw that, get a $700 amp, $700 speakers, and spend a $100 on wire.
There is a point were all that extra speaker wire money could be better put to buying better equipment. So, within in reason, keep your wire and cable in proportion to your equipment. Most simply need good wire and cable, extremely few need great wire and cable unless they have equally great and expensive equipment.
Steve/bluewizard
There are, logically, only three factors that matter inductance, capacitance, and resistance. In another forum someone asked a question about some specific wire and just happened to have full spec on the wire. So, I did an inductive and capacitive analysis of the wire to see just how much effect it would have on the sound.
If interested you can read it here -
http://www.avforums.com/forums/speakers/930671-good-speaker-cable-really-does-work-2.html
On page #2, post #18 he post the speaker wire spec. For the metrically challenged, 1.13mm² is very close to AWG 16ga.
Then in post #20 and #27 I analyze the wire, and on page #6, post #76 I add some additional thoughts.
The conclusion, with this wire none of the parameters have any siginficant effect within the audio range.
I didn't analyze the resistive aspect, but in another discussion, I do factor in resistance of the same wire.
In this thread in Post #12, I follow up with an analysis of the resistance using resulting current from a full 50 watt then a 100 watt surge.
http://www.avforums.com/forums/inte...43583-speaker-cable-does-make-difference.html
Notice that the percentage of loss remains the same regardless of power or current.
Again, no significant effect, and simply going from 16ga wire to 14 ga wire, reduces the resistive loss from 1.45% to 0.33%.
So, yes, definitely do use good wire, but more importantly use good wire in proportion to your other equipment. If you have a small fortune in amp and speakers, your rich, bite the bullet and spend a decent amount on your wire.
However, if you have $500 in your speakers and $500 in your amps, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to spend $500 on wire. I mean screw that, get a $700 amp, $700 speakers, and spend a $100 on wire.
There is a point were all that extra speaker wire money could be better put to buying better equipment. So, within in reason, keep your wire and cable in proportion to your equipment. Most simply need good wire and cable, extremely few need great wire and cable unless they have equally great and expensive equipment.
Steve/bluewizard
mwaters10 said:
If you design an amp as you say and you say is good will you prove that it sounds good by measurements?And what if a customer of yours doesn't like its sound?Any proof is welcome in any issue.But it seems you haven't realized that in the more down to earth world of audio,proof is in the listening.Go on design your dream amp and sell it.Not many buyers will reach the hights you are flying at.Or do you think that a customer will sit there and listening to your measurement talk to be convinced that your amp sounds good.
mwaters10 said:
you can prove an amplifier is phase accurate, reproduces a nice sharp square wave....yes.
however, "sounds good" is completely subjective.
what if my ears have a notch filter at the same frequency the playback system has a spike? i would think that sounds "better" than a flat response. or a room resonance counters/reinforces certain frequencies? i blame the speaker, or the amp, when it's really the room.
people need to trust their happy place, imo. fidelity means truth. so, the closer the ultimate output to the original input, obviously, the higher the fi. it's why i don't like tone knobs and eq's. too much room for 'opinion'. professional engineers have tweaked any recording to their taste, and i want to hear what they wanted me to hear, as closely as possible. if there is a problem with a room or my ears, i change the room's problems with damping and positioning, and as for my ears, .....WAAAAAANH!
along the chain from microphone to speaker, there are tons of wires, filters, resistors, etc...all adding(subtracting, that is) colour. but, i personally think there is a role for serendipity and happy accidents, as well as compounded problems. not to mention the even more important, choice of microphone, and mic placement. sometimes i think a ribbon mike is better on an acoustic guitar, and sometimes a room mic works better, depending on the SONG. i think the same is true for speakers and whatnot. some speakers need a big room to 'breathe', and some others sound punchy up close, and mushy from far.
big fat wire always an improvement, though, to my ears. maybe someone else LIKES that 'veiled' sound of three strand corroded wire found in a pool of muddy water? who am i to judge their experience?
i know sometimes people hear a really 'good' (in brackets because of subjectivity) sound systems, and they would rather listen to some ghetto blaster with a loudness button, and maybe an "SRS" button, too. or others, who have these STUPID DJ rigs that are ear shredders, but to the DJ, it's AWESOME SOUND, DUDE! so much bass and treble! those guys hear an nice flat system, and think it sucks because it's not causing bowel movements in the listener.
that said, i think most people who bother to join a DYI nerd forum probably have similiar taste in 'good'.
too bad the current mastering zeitgeist is so PINNED TO THE MAX. we go through all the trouble of getting wicked hyper tweaked systems that reproduce subtleties that the mixing engineer didn't even know were there, and then, the "music business" sucks all the dynamics out of the performance with infinite compression ratios in the loudness mastering wars.
"sounds good" is completely subjective. "accurately reproduces" is even fuzzy, as there are often push pull relationships between factors. like, on speaker will have a deep, wide sound stage at the expense of punch. so, did you want accuracy in percieved width/depth of soundstage for things like strings, or did you want to feel it in your chest for things like drums?
just my opinion.
That's right, so the building blocks for good design have to
be based on what is proven, not on some schmucks hearing.
If proof is not required, then maybe I need the 1800$ Shun Mook LP Record Clamp for my turntable. They claim it sounds better.
They don't actually provide any proof that it does work, but they do make claims like:
'It is not REALLY MAGIC, but HIGH SCHOOOL PHYSICS at work!'
Audio interconnect manufacturers have been getting away with this kind of thing for years, especially with digital interconnects. They don't prove anything, they do make claims like:
improved macrodynamics
more fluid midrange
improved timing
BLAH .. BLAH .. BLAH
Basically, all the things you can't easily prove, and it is so convenient for companies whose target is desparate audiophiles
You have to have a very convincing story if you're going to charge 1000 pounds for an interconnect. With cables, you definately get what you pay for, the more you spend, the more marketing BS went into it.
BigGayAl said:
Hello Al
I don't wish to engage in whether or not wires have a unique sound or not. I have my opinion on that issue but neither side can or has been able to prove their POV is correct. Thus IMHO it's a waste of time to argue who is or isn't correct!
That said, after reading your post I find the logic of your argument as presented is quite flawed. Let's examine this blind test you're speaking of, shall we?
1) You provide no references we can check to even verify it occurred. I'm not saying it didn't occur but references give your argument more weight. Afterall it's not unheard of for people to exaggerate or embellish their stories in audio forums.
2) We have absolutely no idea of where it was done. So it could have been anywhere from outside to a school cafeteria to inside an outhouse. Knowing the acoustics of where the test was performed is critical.
3) We have no idea of how the blind test was performed. It's quite possible the circumstances under which it was performed contributed to the test subjects inability to discern differences.
4) We have no idea how many, if any of the 160 "trained" muscians play a violin. This is an important point as a drum player would be much better able to discern sonic differences in drums than violins.
Al it most certainly isn't (a) fact that means that no-one can tell the difference between a Strad and a good modern instrument, as you're claiming! What this actually means is no one at that test, a test which is possibly suspect, could tell the difference between those two violins. There's a world of difference between 463 people not hearing a difference and no one being able to hear a difference!
In the same way, no-one can tell the difference between well constructed cables and very expensive audiophile cables. If they could, they would be able to prove it in a blind test. This is a strawman Al. This single test done with two violins doesn't lead to the conclusions about the tests done with audio cables you're claiming it does. Your entire statement isn't logically reached and is flawed with the inclusion of at least three assumptions that readily jump out at me.
1) Where's your proof there is a difference between well constructed cables and very expensive audiophile cables? You're assuming there's a difference!
2) Also where's your proof that very expensive audiophile cables aren't also well constructed, which you're also assuming?
3) Where's your proof that no-one can tell the difference between well constructed cables and very expensive audiophile cables? This is also an assumption.
FYI I have positively & correctly detected differences in ICs & speaker wires in blind conditions provided the tests are done with an audio system in a room & with music with which I'm intimately familiar. Also I require the switching of wires be done manuelly but unseen by all, sans an ABX box. So that's hardly no one!
I'd believe that Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell and/or Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg could readily differentiate between a $5 mil Strad to a modern $20,000 violin. If they could do so would it then automatically mean the exact opposite of what you're claiming? I don't believe it would but, if we followed the flawed logic you used above and looked at it from it's opposite, when the violinists detected the difference between a $5 mil Strad to a modern $20,000 violin in a blind test:
It means that everyone can tell the difference between a Strad and a good modern instrument.
In the same way, everyone can tell the difference between well constructed cables and very expensive audiophile cables.
Al perhaps when you look at your argument in it's opposite POV you'll will see the flaw of your logic and the many assumptions you made...
Thetubeguy1954
jimbob212005 said:
Another poster said this: "...So, do you really need such an expensive interconnect cable to hear what the studio recorded if they themselves were capable of recording their music with such cheap cable ?"
That is SOOO right on the money.
So... ~ the music is like "regular" gas, or, maybe "premium" but not some super rare wonder gas, and, you want to pump it through diamond encrusted platinum gas pump nozzles, so it will run your car better?
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