I don't believe cables make a difference, any input?

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Well, if you take the position that there is no difference between the experimenter knowing for each trial which cable is in place (i.e., no double blind) and an experimenter who doesn't, but is skeptical that there's any differences, you're down to mind-control.

Yes, it would be nice if believers in cable magic ran well-controlled tests so that the skeptical mind-control confounder could be eliminated. But they've been too busy these past 30 years generating ad hoc excuses, apparently.
 
There are many valid goals, design challenges and competition among them, but if you're going to beat people over the head that cables are froo on the basis of an online test that shows distortion beneath ~0.5% is very difficult to discern, logical consistency rears its head when discussing CD vs. LP, SE vs. PP, tubes vs. solid state.

Afair i remember the klippel approach was an auralization model of a real driver with measured performance. The model was used (normally with quite close approximation of the real performance by the simulated one) to allow for separation of linear and nonlinear distorsions.

So, this approach allows to keep the linear part (means amplitude frequency response) and vary the nonlinear distortions for test purposes.
That means the db figures were relative to the real distortion level of the specific driver and this real distortion would be exaggerated (by positive dB numbers) or attenuated (for negative dB figures).

For example if the driver has a real distortion level of -30 dB, than the test figure of -42dB would be -72 dB overall.

Wishes
 
Jakob2
In the tubeguy's proposed test, if he never saw / heard Sy or any helpers whilst doing the test, would that change the situation? I mean SY could actually send someone else and TG wouldn't know, or are you suggesting that the fact that TG knows that SY is behind the test and is expecting failure that this would be enough to alter the outcome? If so it is the expectations of TG not SY that is altering the outcome. I think this is contrary to what rdf is suggesting.

If you´d try to avoid any possible subconscious influence during the trial, then TG should listen alone.

Wishes
 
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Right, for example, if someone rubbed Electret Cream on some cables and asked me to listen (and no be so dependent upon common sense and be so close minded, unlike the "hear something", "try everything" crowd), because measurements down to the thermal noise level showed "differences". I would expect to "hear nothing" and proceed to "hear nothing". Now would that be because of my "hear nothing" expectation bias, or because there was "nothing to hear"?

To avoid that problem you should not know what EUT is to be evaluated.
He it wasn´t me who said that this "scientific blind testing" is an easy task. :)

Whoa, the last time I heard that term, it was being used in Clark Jonhsen's "Wood Effect", nicely reviewed here as The Witch Effect. You do agree that even if Triple Blind is used to test nothing, nothing will be the result?

General problem if a phrase isn´t standardized; Clark Johnson´s approach was totally different, because afair his test wasn´t double blind, see his AES convention paper.
BTW, Dan Shanefield´s comment/reasoning is a bit strange; maybe SY could tell if he used Loudspeakers- afair he thinks polarity was easy to detect double blind.

Wishes
 
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So 2-3 seconds is all that is required for "critical" listening eh? Not the days and weeks (months) audiophiles claim are needed to acclimate and "hear" differences in components, wires, rocks, whatever? So the (repeated - in this thread alone) claims by audiophiles that DBT's are done much too quickly to "hear" differences....is completely bogus?
Jeez, it would be nice if you guys could come to even the slightest consensus, instead of complete disarray as to what is what. I imagine that's tough for you all to do?
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Overall we should remember that humans useally do have different preferences, so (not so surprising is it? ) there is a variable spread in listening habits too.
The strategies were different and it of course depends on the stimulus. On complex signals a lot more of sound aspects were to be valuated and some surely only perceptable over a more prolonged test sample period, while more simple (or artificial) stimuli favor rapid switching.

So, it depends on variables factors and this should be kept in mind if single individuals were participating in tests.
In larger groups these individual preferences tend to average out but that is a different story.

Wishes
 
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You don't need 'all the answers'. Just the answers how people tick, unconciously, and how it is perfectly explainable that our perceptions are not objective, unless you take great care in doing the perceiving.

Why not spend a few hours researching it? I'm sure you'll have an 'aha!' moment or two. It's surely worth it to 'get' what many here are talking about, if only to further understanding?

jd
 
>>The above three part article is a landmark series, as Duncan and Harrison show that Speaker Cables have a dynamic phase shift with a change in signal level. <<

Does anyone have a copy of this? Frankly I don't believe it, they are probably mis-interpreting something else.

I ordered those back issues some years ago but alas I can't find them now. I may have tossed them out or given them to someone else.

However Jim Lesurf of Scots Guide makes a very compelling case here that the phase shifts that were observed were simply due to Duncan's changing the load impedance in order to change the current levels in the cables.

Oops. :D

Current Dependent Phase Shifts in Audio Cables?

se
 
Just read the article, and the hear nothings will find little to help them, but the rest of us could take note. The article is real, detailed, and subjective findings are correlated with objective findings, that make sense to me. (and just about to any other audiophile).
It is such a shame that measurements, made over man-months can be dismissed so easily by others.
 
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[snip]
It is such a shame that measurements, made over man-months can be dismissed so easily by others.

I find it quite curious that even accomplished technical designers like Ben Duncan can make such a goof. I mean, it is very, very basic that when you have an attenuator made from a series reactive element (L or C) and a resistive element, that the phase shift changes with the value of the resistor (or the L or C). I really have a hard time to understand they fell into that trap.

Edit: I do agree that this article is a nice model of how to use the scientific method to resolve an issue.

jd
 
Well, if you take the position that there is no difference between the experimenter knowing for each trial which cable is in place (i.e., no double blind) and an experimenter who doesn't, but is skeptical that there's any differences, you're down to mind-control.

Or straw men. The 'mind control' repetition is starting to sound AJ-ish. More psychologically curious is the insistence on demanding a combative administrator is admissible when a technological fix is incredibly simple.

Re: Mercury, for those who want to chase it further online resources are plentiful. The anamoly in Mercury's precession works out to a roughly 0.00015 degrees per year. If you want to follow SY in believing that was recognizable as important data without comparison to the logical framework and resultant predictions of Newtonian physics, or that the concept of manipulating evidence without a pre-existing logical framework for doing so is coherent, fill yer boots as they say.
 
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