mmm..good
just bottled 2 cases of home brew chocalate mocha porter... ~6.5% alcohol, 56 ibu... yum... good stuff
Oh, wait!... this is diyaudio, not diyhomebrew... shucks... it sure beats screwing around with cables though... back to Shostakovich & Rimsky-Korsakov
just bottled 2 cases of home brew chocalate mocha porter... ~6.5% alcohol, 56 ibu... yum... good stuff
Oh, wait!... this is diyaudio, not diyhomebrew... shucks... it sure beats screwing around with cables though... back to Shostakovich & Rimsky-Korsakov
testing has moved - its now at the gold-fingered brewers house!
Commiserations JC - a small matter, or a glaucoma or something of that ilk?
Commiserations JC - a small matter, or a glaucoma or something of that ilk?
Well, that's great result. Could you please tell us a little more about the test - equipment, method etc...?
Personally two glasses of wine alters the sound of my system more than any good cable ever has.
cheers
Personally two glasses of wine alters the sound of my system more than any good cable ever has.
cheers
Either the sound of your system or the height at which you are flying
He described the procedure earlier in the thread. If you're looking for an actual blind test, you'll be disappointed.
Andre does, however, have a blind protocol which he has promised to use. I await the results.
I'm happy to do either, but not both at the one sitting.
No problem with that, we would just need to ensure that the listener(s) can't see which one is connected.
If the listener didn't leave the room you'd need a real water tight method of ensuring no visual clues were given about whether or not the cable was being switched. Say the random number said don't switch the existing cable - I think it would be pretty obvious to the listener what was happening. Whereas if they leave the room, you could have a fixed period of time for the listener to be out of the room, so they could not guess what had happened.
Well, it would certainly bring the session to an early close if they couldn't! (Although great excuse for early alcohol celebrations.
)True.
Well as I said, I doubt anything will be good enough for proof.
Considering that I left the room for cable changes, the equipment was covered with blankets, the listening room (AV room with projector) was dark enough that I battled to see the chair when going into the room from the bright outside light, sat down press play, close my eyes while listening (as I always do 🙂 ), stop the music, tell which cable is used and whether I prefer it above the previous cable or not, I battle to understand how the presence of the two testers behind the equipment, not looking at or talking to me, could have influenced me, they must have put on a different smile for each of the four cables. 😉
At that time, the reason why I did it was because one of the two testers didn't believe I will be able to tell the difference if I don't know which cable is used, especially since it was the top four cables from that manufacturer.
For now, the testing will have to wait, I've sold my speakers and have to start building again. 😱
I never tried to do it that way, I don't think a set of 'aerials' connected to an amp is such a good idea.
I assume you would need Lipshitz and Vanderkooy double blind written approval to make SY happy 😀
Agreed. It IS hard enough to do one well.
So which is it?
For sure. I have a couple of ideas. First off, what (quickly) is biwiring? I could never understand it myself, two runs of cable (one thicker than the other??) from the amp to the speaker. But, have we seperated the w and t at the speaker or not.
Anyway, whilst I wait for that quick answer, it would not be hard to rig up a suitably large screen behind each speaker. The protocol could be as simple as each time a swap occurred (whether or not an actual change was made) the existing cable could be removed completely, and laid down next to the other.
THEN, a cable (either the same or different) would be picked up and inserted back into the terminals. In other words, whatever is done the same procedure ios followed, rather than a 'no change' suddenly means no sound of cables being removed. Did that mangled sentence make sense?
Anyway, let's not count our chickens, we need a brave volunteer. I'm willing to bet we do not get one.
Are you up for a trip to newcastle if needs be? We can TRY andy g again. He is quite vocal about how poorly conducted dbts are usually done.
I just hope for all our sakes he will deign to teach us how to do a proper one.
I have no idea andre, is that true?? I guess we could reverse it, instead of having two connected runs from the amp to a single connection at the speaker, we could have two connected runs from the speaker to a single connected cable at the amp???
Does that overcome the problem??
Thanks for your cable test...it is a long thread and I confess I do not recall you saying it previously. It sounds startling to say the least. A PERFECT score....it does seem to fly in the face of accumulated knowledge and experience does it not?
I also understand (what I think will be) your response to THAT response! hahaha but geez, all of a sudden in an obscure place somewhere a cable guy gets a perfect score. As I imagine curly does, he gets perfect scores too.
I don't know what to say andre, I accept your honesty in the matter, but equally I am skeptical, so all I can say is that your experiment needs to be reproduced. That is as diplomatic as I can be..hope I get a pass mark!!
Very quickly SY, if you could. From memory, what were your concerns about andres test?
PS, go pro drivers...you won't regret it!
Andre, don't bother to attempt to please SY. It is impossible, as he is 'leading from a conclusion' and IF you did everything to his standard, and Dr. Lipshitz's, you would NOT be able to hear any differences, unless the cables were defective. This is because the test 'blinds' you to anything but level, major frequency deviations, or perhaps absolute polarity. This has been shown for 30 years, and will continue to do so. It is not that subtle differences do not exist, but they will not show up in this sort of test.
The reasons being: poor switching or listening playback equipment, the DEMAND for ABX, rather than A-B comparisons and choosing which you prefer, and biased statistics designed to prevent type 1 errors at the expense of allowing type 2 errors. This was shown decades ago by Lowenthal (sp). The change of timbre in the music, is what, I attest, is the reason why people make mistakes when making listening comparisons, and instead of choosing what they prefer, they are forced to say what cable they are listening to at any random time. I personally postulate that the left side of the brain becomes dominant in this situation and suppresses the right side, that is normally used for appreciation of musical nuance. Then only the 'stick figure' representation of the music remains, and only louder, frequency imbalance, or perhaps absolute polarity (on some selections) remains.
This is why it is impractical and actually absurd to be forced to make such a test, as it will show nothing either way, as it has been shown to be flawed in the past 30 years. That is why audio professionals, like me, ignore it, and continue to use more 'open' methods.
The reasons being: poor switching or listening playback equipment, the DEMAND for ABX, rather than A-B comparisons and choosing which you prefer, and biased statistics designed to prevent type 1 errors at the expense of allowing type 2 errors. This was shown decades ago by Lowenthal (sp). The change of timbre in the music, is what, I attest, is the reason why people make mistakes when making listening comparisons, and instead of choosing what they prefer, they are forced to say what cable they are listening to at any random time. I personally postulate that the left side of the brain becomes dominant in this situation and suppresses the right side, that is normally used for appreciation of musical nuance. Then only the 'stick figure' representation of the music remains, and only louder, frequency imbalance, or perhaps absolute polarity (on some selections) remains.
This is why it is impractical and actually absurd to be forced to make such a test, as it will show nothing either way, as it has been shown to be flawed in the past 30 years. That is why audio professionals, like me, ignore it, and continue to use more 'open' methods.
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I don't follow that. Your ears remain, you just can't peek. If there's some "x" factor of audibility, you should be able to hear it even when not peeking.
I still haven't gotten an answer to my question, "What sonic advantage do you get from peeking?"
Also incorrect. My own preference is for triangle comparisons, but rationalists are perfectly happy with any test that is blind (or otherwise controls for bias and expectation) and statistically significant, whether for a single listener or for a population. The extra restrictions are just in your mind, not in the technical community.
First, I see you mentioned bi-wiring. It is seperate runs of cables from the amp to the speakers, the speakers will have four terminals, two for LF and two for HF with seperate XO's inside the speakers.
I use two runs of 'exactly the same' cable except for cable dia, perhaps one can run a test by just swapping the different cables at the speaker end. I don't like unconnected ends on cables, I believe it is looking for trouble.
How about the other test (also described here somewhere) where I did a test just for fun on a set of coaxial interconnects for directionality. 😱 After a LOT of sighted direction changes (the cables doesn't have arrows, I used the direction of writing as a guide) I thought there might be a small difference in stage focus but difficult to tell. I did the blind test anyway, after nine tests I was exhausted and called it of. The result, 8 out of 9 but I said the 'direction' the wrong way round. 😀 The sequence were decided by my son, flipping a coin, I've seen afterwards it stayed in the same direction for four or five times in a row during the test, not funny. To me that test showed nothing on that set of cables.
If I hear something I like, I will. 😉
I don't know if blind testing has been shown to be flawed to the extent that you seem to believe. Just because something has flaws doesn't mean there are no merits. The only people I see complaining about AB and ABX testing are audiophiles. ABX testing is very open as you can do it alone and at your own schedule.
I agree with you, there are too many variables and distractions the way these tests normally seems to be done. I believe it is quite unfair, if not perhaps showing a total lack of understanding, to expect somebody to give accurate results on an unknown system of unknown quality, using unknown music....
After all that handicaps, they use a bunch of students for testing, I guess because there ears test better at HF. 🙄
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