Can you try it with acoustical instruments?
First listen sighted and see if you can hear differences, then blind.
First listen sighted and see if you can hear differences, then blind.
Andre Visser said:
The tracks I used began with solo acoustic guitar (steel strings), then guitar + voice, then acoustic drums/percussion + electric bass.
I did listen sighted immediately before the test, and was fairly confident of a reasonable result.
It was hard. I now identify with those who commented that what seemed clear differences are suddenly not under blinded conditions. I tried hard to relax into my normal listening mode, and focus alternatively on the overall sound, then on specific aspects.
My subjectivist views have taken a bit of a knock tonight!
fredex said:
It took about 2 hours.
I would advise potential purchasers of expensive cables to do this.
Alan, congratulations for going beyond armchair speculation and actually testing your belief. I am sincerely impressed that you took the trouble and examined your preconceptions honestly- that's a very rare ability.
Did you change the interconnect between CD and pre-amp?
I've heard larger differences with this than between pre- and power-amps on some systems.
I've heard larger differences with this than between pre- and power-amps on some systems.
Andre Visser said:
IC between the CD and the Charlize - The Charlize was built as an integrated amp (Alps blue pot). Hookup wiring in the Charlize is copper from good quality CAT5 cabling.
At one stage in the test I got 9 cables wrong in a row! Clever eh!?
Question now is - which IC do I keep in the main system? Perhaps one last coin toss!
🙂
surely you aren't giving up after one test ;-)
much as I love Lenny, its not the sort of tracks I would be using.
What you need to do now is have a good sighted listen to the the cables and figure out what the real differences were you thought to heard. Learning to really listen is good !!!
After some time with both cables (say 2-3 weeks from now) and when you aren't being pressured, try the test again.
much as I love Lenny, its not the sort of tracks I would be using.
What you need to do now is have a good sighted listen to the the cables and figure out what the real differences were you thought to heard. Learning to really listen is good !!!
After some time with both cables (say 2-3 weeks from now) and when you aren't being pressured, try the test again.
AJinFLA said:
Again the purile belligerent mode of conversation.
And you obviously have not read much of the thread, but are making things up that you think people have said.
I strongly suggest you go back and re-read.
Andy Graddon said:
enough with the snide comments please
Alan, you are a god amongst subjectivists😀 😀 😀
Seriously, congratulations for being man enough to do a fair test and actually report something to us about it, not to mention admitting the results when you could have made up a 100% selection rate. Would you consider doing the experiment with your head immobilized and see if you can still hear any difference? We wont have a problem with it if you don't, you have done enough.
Andy and Andre, already looking for excuse to dismiss his findings...
wrong music...
wrong location of the IC's...
Come on
Andy Graddon said:
Dum de dum, Andy.
The point is, I was convinced that the differences I heard did not require me to select music specifically to hear them. Lenny just happened to be what I had been listening to today. There is enough in his music for cable differences to show up.
I have listened sighted to these two cables for some time now. It was an uneasy time - I expected the silvers to best the coppers, but they didn't. Then they (seemed) to have a horrible long settling in time, for much of which they sounded slightly harsh and unnatural. They have sounded much better this last week. Now is the time, I thought!
I wasn't really pressured - nothing hung on the outcome. Neither cable was significantly expensive.
Will I repeat it? What would it prove? I am satisfied that the differences I heard are real but small (the test was difficult), that my brain is confused enough to misinterpret these and consistently pick the wrong cable. Neither cable was identifiable as "best" sonically.
I might try a couple of blinded tests with Brahms or something, but I have learned all I need.
Learn to listen!? I have listened more last few months than ever. Bought lots of CDs. I am a musician (piano), have perfect pitch, know what transients, various harmonics, different types of distortion etc sound like (I work with synthesisers too which is great for building up knowledge about how sound works). I thought I was well capable (despite having 48yr old ears) of doing this.
@nunayafb
I usually listen critically with my head held still. In fact moving my head very slightly seemed to help distinguish the cables. If cable differences rely on that though, then they are really pretty insignificant.
5/20 urmm, is that not a significant result?
who cares if they were wrong, surely 5/20 is as 'correct' as 15/20? (even if wrong, if you follow me)
cheers Alan, good onya for actually doing it AND being honest in reporting what you thought was a blow to your 'subjectivist inner man' heh heh.
my only beef with subjectivist reports is not that there may be differences, I can easily accept that, but I do have difficulty with the described magnitude of the differences.
I tend to feel you actually did get a result, but certainly wait for more discussion on it, but what I personally get confirmation on is that the 'real' differences are much much closer than the 'apparent' differences you thought may exist.
whatever way you cut the cake, you have learnt something from the exercise and that can ONLY be good.
who cares if they were wrong, surely 5/20 is as 'correct' as 15/20? (even if wrong, if you follow me)
cheers Alan, good onya for actually doing it AND being honest in reporting what you thought was a blow to your 'subjectivist inner man' heh heh.
my only beef with subjectivist reports is not that there may be differences, I can easily accept that, but I do have difficulty with the described magnitude of the differences.
I tend to feel you actually did get a result, but certainly wait for more discussion on it, but what I personally get confirmation on is that the 'real' differences are much much closer than the 'apparent' differences you thought may exist.
whatever way you cut the cake, you have learnt something from the exercise and that can ONLY be good.
terry j said:
Yep ... wrong results, but cable differences are JUST statistically significant at the standard p<0.05 level.
Alan your answers and reasons are good. I would second all of SY's and nunayafb's remarks about your personal qualities.
It sounds like you made a real effort to exclude factors that can influence the outcome. I am sure you will be quizzed by some who have not made any efforts to find out the truth. There will be a myriad of problems with what you did but for me it all sounds reasonable enough to reach the simple conclusion that these "huge" differences reported by some just don't exist outside their sighted tests.
Hopefully as more people try a test and experience the bizarre, more minds will change. My mind changed and it was a real shock I can tell you.
cheers
It sounds like you made a real effort to exclude factors that can influence the outcome. I am sure you will be quizzed by some who have not made any efforts to find out the truth. There will be a myriad of problems with what you did but for me it all sounds reasonable enough to reach the simple conclusion that these "huge" differences reported by some just don't exist outside their sighted tests.
Hopefully as more people try a test and experience the bizarre, more minds will change. My mind changed and it was a real shock I can tell you.
cheers
Alan Hope said:
Ok, so if you just did the test next weekend and got exactly the same results say, does the significance of 10/40 mean more than 5/20??
Out of curiosity, did you listen to excerpts, or a whole track and then again?? One of the 'criticisms; levelled against DBTs is the 'fast switching' nature, even tho of course there is NO requirement for it to be fast switching. Wonder if (now your daughter is grooved in on the procedure) you could learn more by something like the following.
Whenever you listen to your stereo, there is one cable or the other in the system. And hopefully you can rig it that you don't know which is which (and no peeking heh heh). Simply keep a diary on, I dunno, 'overall musical enjoyment' or something from day to day. Nothing major like listening for 'the crystalline decay of the trailing edge of the guitar note', but just a scale of 'musicality'.
At the same time your daughter simply keeps a record of what is in on which day.
Just listen to your system as normal (even tho you are analytically aware that a test is still being conducted, pity we can't get around that...unless your daughter is mischevious enough to come up with this idea herself and not tell you she is testing you 😉) and see if after two weeks there is a trend you can pick between the two cables ability to 'make you smile' when listening to music.
It is very much about learning to listen.
My friend’s system. I stayed with him for a couple of weeks a long time ago when he was playing with 3 different speaker cables. It was one of his pet projects at the time, and being fellow audio geeks.. well... we listened !!!
Yes it was easy to tell them apart when listening sighted,and yes, it was initially quite difficult to tell them apart when I didn’t know which was plugged in.
But he taught me to listen, a slight blurring on a particular transient on one cable but not another. A slight change in a nuance with the third cable on a particular track. By the end of those couple of weeks I was generally able to pick which cable was in the system, given the right tracks.
I tried switching the cables on him a couple of times without him knowing, and he picked up the switch every time and picked which cable, unsighted.
So I know that it is possible. I've seen it done !
I haven't switched cables on my own system, because it quite hard to switch cables, and I don't see the need.
My friend’s system. I stayed with him for a couple of weeks a long time ago when he was playing with 3 different speaker cables. It was one of his pet projects at the time, and being fellow audio geeks.. well... we listened !!!
Yes it was easy to tell them apart when listening sighted,and yes, it was initially quite difficult to tell them apart when I didn’t know which was plugged in.
But he taught me to listen, a slight blurring on a particular transient on one cable but not another. A slight change in a nuance with the third cable on a particular track. By the end of those couple of weeks I was generally able to pick which cable was in the system, given the right tracks.
I tried switching the cables on him a couple of times without him knowing, and he picked up the switch every time and picked which cable, unsighted.
So I know that it is possible. I've seen it done !
I haven't switched cables on my own system, because it quite hard to switch cables, and I don't see the need.
Yes, absolutely. There are a few tweaks that would make this a "better" test, but Alan got the basics right.
terry j said:
Read up on some statistics. Yes it does - it is a bigger sample from a population, and sample size makes a difference even where the results are the same percentage-wise.
I listened to excerpts. There was about a minute between each listening - no easy way round this. My daughter was curious about the whole DBT procedure, why I wanted it. Before we started, with sighted listening, she said - I can tell the cables apart easily - one is clearer. Perhaps I'll blind her next time!
I have no intention of turning my life into a cable-testing-lab experience. I've got music to listen to, and to play, and to enjoy with friends! If I do any more testing in the future - you guys will be the first to hear about it.
🙂
Andy Graddon said:
You would need to have an exceptional memory as well as exceptional ears before this would be of any practical significance.
cheers
Alan Hope said:
Ouch.
Will file that way with 'google is your friend' and 'we have a search function here you know'. I was pretty sure it did make a difference statistically. I only mentioned that because to me it did seem that in fact you were borderline showing that there is in fact an audible difference. If you repeated it and got the same results then that would have been even more evidence.
If that were the case then your subjectivist views would not have taken as much of a knock as you first thought.
I agree wholeheartedly. Not that it is in anyway your responsibility to do this (and hey, lets face it, you have done way more than most to test your preconceptions, like the rest of them here it's my hat off to you) but the second part of my suggestion was an attempt to account for the predictable 'standard' comeback, dbt's are unnatural and easily mask perceptible differences that are obvious in normal sighted listening.
Andys account resonates with me, the fact that the guy didn't know he was under test was a major 'strength' of Andys little test. Of course that does not mean just yet we run out and re-write the textbooks, but interesting.
From both Alans and Andys test, I end up with the same conclusion regarding cables, it's not worth the expense and bother for the (at best) limited and subtle 'gains' that may be gotten. Making your own diy stuff of course changes the cost/benefit ratio, but nonetheless it's sufficient to have cable of enough size to do the job.
The business about hearing subtle transient clues on certain types of music, well if you only listen to close miked simple acoustic jazz or something, well OK maybe.
But it seems equally logical to me that one cable that might show a difference on light acoustic folk music could be equally 'flawed' and mask stuff on deathmetal for example.
So unless you have a range of cables each specified for a specific genre......
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