Yes, I eagerly await someone making the remarkable claim of sonic differences due to metal to provide evidence like that.
I've had involvement with three different cable tests of that sort. Each time, the claimant backed out. The only variation was the method of backing out- aggressive accusations of test rigging following file analysis (no listening results submitted!), a polite "sorry, I've changed my mind," and a complete disappearance.
I remember those, finding subjects that could care less about the results good luck.
That's for sure, I could pick gems of just plain nonsense (from one of the first) out of this all day long.
http://www.mitcables.com/pdf/uhf_mit.pdf
I watched that video earlier this year..
Hearing the words in the ZEP song, and imagining hearing letters that aren't present in sentences is one thing.. It's to far of a reach to use that experiment and say "see you're imaging there's a difference between Silver and copper interconnects" or any differences you hear in with Audio gear..
I commented on that video in March and it got removed by Ethan.. He emailed me to say it would be removed but that he wouldn't BAN me from the discussion at that point.. I didn't realize that he had that control over the comments..
This should tell you something about the purpose of the video
I'm guessing that many of his followers with the comments on how great video is are non Audiophiles who are saying to themselves "All Stereo equipment sounds the same, so why do I need to spend a lot of money on Gear, I'll just spend money on room acoustics"
Hearing the words in the ZEP song, and imagining hearing letters that aren't present in sentences is one thing.. It's to far of a reach to use that experiment and say "see you're imaging there's a difference between Silver and copper interconnects" or any differences you hear in with Audio gear..
I commented on that video in March and it got removed by Ethan.. He emailed me to say it would be removed but that he wouldn't BAN me from the discussion at that point.. I didn't realize that he had that control over the comments..
This should tell you something about the purpose of the video
I'm guessing that many of his followers with the comments on how great video is are non Audiophiles who are saying to themselves "All Stereo equipment sounds the same, so why do I need to spend a lot of money on Gear, I'll just spend money on room acoustics"
Love the porn mustache. Were these the guys who had potted modules at the ends of the cables that (when cut open) had nothing on one end and a 150R resistor at the other?
Before Ethan started to dismiss spiel about power cables not as over priced filters but as not able to effect sound . It was interesting in the how test results can be skewed. Ethan is a salesman and dismisses everything he does not sell. I have measured some of those power cables they are rf filters based on the inductance ,capacitance and impedance of them . In a system that does not have enough isolation from the mains they can sound different because of that rf filtering that is simple EE no snake oil, no magic conductor shape, just simple tank circuit . So while Ethan is a great source of acoustic info on room the other thing said must be taken with a grain of salt . Well at lease from where I seat.
I doubt cables on their own can act as a filter, the difference between cables is not that extreme...I also believe a cable manufacturer got a slap on the wrist for claiming such things...
That's not really the point at all, the point is you can make things audible by mere suggestion. Just imagine the same experiment, but instead of "seeing the words makes you hear them" imagine that it's "seeing that a cable is marked 99.999% pure silver makes you hear crap you didn't hear the first time."
Now, imagine that all I have to do is change which cable has that marking and your opinion follows the marking, rather than the cable, statistically speaking, without fail.
The only..repeat only way to know that you aren't biased or deluding yourself, would be to test for audibility without being prepped by knowing what's being tested, and not being able to observe with any senses other than your hearing...an idea people seem to be allergic to because it's the audio equivalent of being told Santa isn't real and people don't want to believe they've spent thousands of dollars over the years chasing ghosts.
Mains cable myths would be even easier to test, just take the piece of gear that's going to be plugged into it and solder a 10 foot loop of normal cable through a relay that jumps the extra loop of normal cable when it's energized, then ask a group of people if they can tell which way is which with repeatability.
focus is important in hearing, you can miss some features while concentrating on others
knowing the difference under test is fine, if it has some objective correlate that can be ordered then training with controlled amounts of the difference is all for the good if there is a audible threshold
properly controlled Psychoacoustic listening tests don't have to be "hostile", "rigged" - subjects reasonable concerns should be addressed - of course preserving Blinding, eliminating all cues other than the tested variable in the trials
knowing the difference under test is fine, if it has some objective correlate that can be ordered then training with controlled amounts of the difference is all for the good if there is a audible threshold
properly controlled Psychoacoustic listening tests don't have to be "hostile", "rigged" - subjects reasonable concerns should be addressed - of course preserving Blinding, eliminating all cues other than the tested variable in the trials
Getting a little too far the other way. It has been demonstrated that pathological speaker/cable combinations can and do have audible frequency response consequences. There's also the cables that make your amplifier oscillate.
We had a long discussion here about the relationship of bulk R/L/C issues and the concept of impedance matching making the later a little less scornful with respect to audio (at least I think so).
Taking your word for it, this begs the question: where were you guys with that knowledge and experience for 6 years before Otala&Lohstroh picked it up?
Is that why many of you guys are sore at Otala, that he did write about it while you didn't, and got all the glory?
The other thing is to use appropriate positive controls. When testing for "magic" effects, this can't really be done, but if someone claims that they can (for example) hear the difference between a DAC fed from a clock with 100ps of jitter and one fed from a clock with 10ps jitter, it's very appropriate to make sure that the claimant can hear the difference between 10ps and 10ns (or whatever the currently-established threshold is). If the claimant can't do that, no need to go further.
This notion has been abused here to demand that tests of "magic" have positive controls of unrelated non-magic parameters (e.g., level, frequency response), but that makes very little sense to me.
This notion has been abused here to demand that tests of "magic" have positive controls of unrelated non-magic parameters (e.g., level, frequency response), but that makes very little sense to me.
Yes, in the early 70ies, the best you cpuld expect was something like 0.8% THD or so.
Then, quite suddenly, in just 2 or 3 years, this started to drop almost wildly, but the sound also started to change, and not for the better. On the other hand, new companies started to appear, High End was born, and again we had some good ideas and solutions floating around.
Oh yessir, it was a very interesting time indeed.
First, insisting on double blind.
Then misleading statistics. Heck, if you could break the bank at Monte Carlo with 60% wins, why do we have to do 95%?
Three, IF some test somewhere shows differences, it is immediately stopped, because 'something must be wrong'.
Four, instead of politely implying that people are wrong about open testing, cheap insults like: 'peeking' are inserted to 'shame' the people who claim to hear the differences. etc. etc.
Then misleading statistics. Heck, if you could break the bank at Monte Carlo with 60% wins, why do we have to do 95%?
Three, IF some test somewhere shows differences, it is immediately stopped, because 'something must be wrong'.
Four, instead of politely implying that people are wrong about open testing, cheap insults like: 'peeking' are inserted to 'shame' the people who claim to hear the differences. etc. etc.
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IIRC the norm for RIAA in 1968 was a classic video triple, i.e. three cheap transistors. There was no commercial potential at the time, certainly the technology for something like an LM3886 was far off.
Bob Cordell's paper on TIM is available on his site, the last paragraph of part one says it very concisely.
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Because guessing can get you to 60% when we're talking about audio gear, and if you're going to talk about differences as though they're 100% audible, then they should actually be 100% audible, by..you know, being able to tell the difference.
It's a logical failing to claim something is audible and then in the same breath complain that someone is asking for it to actually be audible.
BTW, I really don't think we should underestimate our ears. I think we still don't know enough how the whole mechanism works, fro ear to brain, and what the brain does with after that, and how.
Some years ago, I was told by a friend to check out the Neotech pure braided silver cable. Always curious, I went out and bought 2 meters' worth. At the time, I had a line amp open on the table, so I connected it to the RCA sockets with my usual cable, listened for about 3 days to my favorite music material, and in the middle of the 4th day, I swapped the connecting cabling for silver.
I repeated the test and had a distinct feeling that I was hearing more ambient information, but I wasn't absolutely sure. Then I completed the silver cable circle and put it on both the input and the output. This time I was sure there was a positive difference, which I must say was not stunning or enlightning, but it was there and it was just big enough to be heard.
Then I did it all over again, but this time starting from the all silver edition and switching to the same manufacturer's best OFC cable. Lastly, in went my usual OFC cabling. Once again, the two Neotech cables were audibly better than my usual, and the difference between them was truly very small. I had to really concentrate and pay extreme attention to pick between the two Neotech cables. Any difference was just barely audible on the most demanding program material I have. Frankly, in view of the fact that the all silver cable costs exactly twice as much as their best OFC cable, I am not sure the difference is really worth the added investment.
But I still use pure silver for myself, what the heck, I'm doing it for myself, might as well throw in the best I know of. Fortunately, the cable runs I need are very short, so even if there are several of them, the end cost is still reasonable.
All this is related to internal wiring, mind you. For interconnects, I've settled on silver plated OFC cable also from Neotech, but again, since all my gear is grouped together, I rarely need long interconnects. Prehaps those wdo do need longer interconnects might feel differently.
Some years ago, I was told by a friend to check out the Neotech pure braided silver cable. Always curious, I went out and bought 2 meters' worth. At the time, I had a line amp open on the table, so I connected it to the RCA sockets with my usual cable, listened for about 3 days to my favorite music material, and in the middle of the 4th day, I swapped the connecting cabling for silver.
I repeated the test and had a distinct feeling that I was hearing more ambient information, but I wasn't absolutely sure. Then I completed the silver cable circle and put it on both the input and the output. This time I was sure there was a positive difference, which I must say was not stunning or enlightning, but it was there and it was just big enough to be heard.
Then I did it all over again, but this time starting from the all silver edition and switching to the same manufacturer's best OFC cable. Lastly, in went my usual OFC cabling. Once again, the two Neotech cables were audibly better than my usual, and the difference between them was truly very small. I had to really concentrate and pay extreme attention to pick between the two Neotech cables. Any difference was just barely audible on the most demanding program material I have. Frankly, in view of the fact that the all silver cable costs exactly twice as much as their best OFC cable, I am not sure the difference is really worth the added investment.
But I still use pure silver for myself, what the heck, I'm doing it for myself, might as well throw in the best I know of. Fortunately, the cable runs I need are very short, so even if there are several of them, the end cost is still reasonable.
All this is related to internal wiring, mind you. For interconnects, I've settled on silver plated OFC cable also from Neotech, but again, since all my gear is grouped together, I rarely need long interconnects. Prehaps those wdo do need longer interconnects might feel differently.
On the contrary, it is. My feeling is that much of audio gear in the late 70ies did not sound as good as their elders from the early 70ies. Most, not all.
This changed again in the first half of the 80ies, when audio started to fight for its life through competition firrst with video, and then the PC. As a specific example, my Sansui AU-X701 plays better music than its predecessors from the late 70ies, despite almost identical spec sheets.
I don't know what you were doing at that time, but many audio companies began to struggle for sheer survival in the second half of the 80ies. By 1990, quite a number of well respected manufacturers were ither bought out by others, or disappeared from the scene altogether (meaning Chapter 11). Akai, JVC, and many others went out for good, others lingered on for some time but eventually also went to the Great Spirit in the Sky.
I don't think it was more NFB as such (athough there was that as well to be sure), but more the fact that they tended to play it too safe and used soetimes incredibly large Miller caps. I understand that mass production makes them cautios, but I feel they misused some valuable tools to no good end.
In other words, they wanted to squeeze abnormal specs out of simplistic circuits. The KISS principle does have its limitations.
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