Damdidamdidam, trallalala, damdidididdam......
Ahh, what was that? Sorry I was to busy enjoying the music 😉
cheers 😉
Ahh, what was that? Sorry I was to busy enjoying the music 😉
cheers 😉
audio-kraut said:
I was talking about interconnects having less audible effect if the source has low output impedance.
Jesus!
Hello,
I'm not saying either way is either correct or wrong.
Participating in any test is tough enough as it is; no one wants to make a fool out of himself so he/she is already under stress to come up with the "correct" answer from the word go.
That means that at least some percentage of the participatants is going to take a guess.
Not something you'd want whilst organozing tests but that's how it goes.
Another factor that usually plays a role is time, the tests run for say a couple of hours and that's final, no second chances.
While I've participated successfully (I often was lucky enough to guess the correct answer one might say) in quite a number of blind tests these tests ultimately convinced me of only one thing:
my hearing/brain interface or whatever you'd want to call it was sharp enough to detect a difference when there was one, often doubt was felt when there wasn't any and I certainly could tell what I prefered out of the samples.
Incidentally that often concurred with what was commonly considered as being better but that is pretty meaningless to my mind.
But, you may ask, why or what convinced you that cables do sound different from one another?
Quite simply, I had the opportunity to live with and compare extensively many cables, prototypes of new products, even designed some of my own.
In short some of these cables I still have and I can give a pretty accurate description of what most of them sound like.
Not just in my own system (always a work in progress anyway)
but in other people's as well provided those systems have enough resolution to show up these differences.
Luckily for me, the description I give to other people and the ones they pass on to me almost invariably concur.
This experience which by now encompasses a 20 year plus span of similar exercises not only includes wires, cables and passive components but also various brands of active components as well .
Does that mean those "tests" of mine are scientifically valid? No, of course not.
Yet to me and countless other people it means that we can safely recommend this or that component or advise to stay away from another one.
About 80% of what is now trendy among audiophiles today are things we had already discovered a long time ago, be that the sonic signature of an Allen Bradley carbon comp resistor or the almost lack of personality of say a Vishay bulk foil resistor.
Does all this stuff measure differently? Sure it does. Yet sometimes those measurable differences are so small as to be considered as "inaudible" by most everyone.
Still, after all those years it's kind of hard to fool oneself into thinking that all it ever was was someone's imagination running wild....
Me on my own? Maybe.
Thousands of people? Maybe but not very likely....
It is my conviction that a true scientist investigates using whatever means he has at his disposal, not to take the easy way out before the game even started...No?
With all that global warming going on it's going to be a tough choice: to drown in Flanders or to melt in Texas.....
Cheers, 😉
PS: Sorry for the overblown rant, folks....
I'm not saying either way is either correct or wrong.
Participating in any test is tough enough as it is; no one wants to make a fool out of himself so he/she is already under stress to come up with the "correct" answer from the word go.
That means that at least some percentage of the participatants is going to take a guess.
Not something you'd want whilst organozing tests but that's how it goes.
Another factor that usually plays a role is time, the tests run for say a couple of hours and that's final, no second chances.
While I've participated successfully (I often was lucky enough to guess the correct answer one might say) in quite a number of blind tests these tests ultimately convinced me of only one thing:
my hearing/brain interface or whatever you'd want to call it was sharp enough to detect a difference when there was one, often doubt was felt when there wasn't any and I certainly could tell what I prefered out of the samples.
Incidentally that often concurred with what was commonly considered as being better but that is pretty meaningless to my mind.
But, you may ask, why or what convinced you that cables do sound different from one another?
Quite simply, I had the opportunity to live with and compare extensively many cables, prototypes of new products, even designed some of my own.
In short some of these cables I still have and I can give a pretty accurate description of what most of them sound like.
Not just in my own system (always a work in progress anyway)
but in other people's as well provided those systems have enough resolution to show up these differences.
Luckily for me, the description I give to other people and the ones they pass on to me almost invariably concur.
This experience which by now encompasses a 20 year plus span of similar exercises not only includes wires, cables and passive components but also various brands of active components as well .
Does that mean those "tests" of mine are scientifically valid? No, of course not.
Yet to me and countless other people it means that we can safely recommend this or that component or advise to stay away from another one.
About 80% of what is now trendy among audiophiles today are things we had already discovered a long time ago, be that the sonic signature of an Allen Bradley carbon comp resistor or the almost lack of personality of say a Vishay bulk foil resistor.
Does all this stuff measure differently? Sure it does. Yet sometimes those measurable differences are so small as to be considered as "inaudible" by most everyone.
Still, after all those years it's kind of hard to fool oneself into thinking that all it ever was was someone's imagination running wild....
Me on my own? Maybe.
Thousands of people? Maybe but not very likely....
It is my conviction that a true scientist investigates using whatever means he has at his disposal, not to take the easy way out before the game even started...No?
With all that global warming going on it's going to be a tough choice: to drown in Flanders or to melt in Texas.....
Cheers, 😉
PS: Sorry for the overblown rant, folks....
fdegrove said:[overblown rant corrected by janneman 😉 ]PS: Sorry for the overblown rant, folks....
Frank,
Overblown or not, thanks for the carefull explanation.
But note that I never said that cables sound all the same, and I have several times noted that the title of this thread was just to attact reaction, which worked beautifully.
But. I can readily accept that what you describe, the development of a certain way of discerning sound from one component or cable to another over many years and many cirtical listening events, but that only brings more questions, like,
- why can I not find any documentation on blind tests with consistent results like the ones you have participated in?
- how do I know that YOUR statements on audibility are trustworthy, and not those of a random other member here (or vice versa)?
Now you can say, listen for yourself. But that immediately means that all those reports of the so-called golden ears are useless, because I am only to believe MY ears.
OTOH, if I could rely on someone (like in a repeatable blind test), I would know at least in which way to go to get better sound, instead of chasing my own tail trying this, or that, or something else, ad infinitum.....
In that respect it is telling in a negative sort of way, that 99.999% of the reports here are from a simple change that ALWAYS improves the sound. After 10's of years of improvements from 1000's of would-be engineers, you should think we would have audio nirwana by now. Yet, (as an example, I don't want to bash this particular group) people still report that their Quad 303 or 405 improved their contemporary system's sound if they would only replace the electrolytics. I mean, really, do you expect me to take all this seriously?
Jan Didden
quote:
/ "Whether one likes it or not, ALL the contents in our minds is subjective........
Absolutely.
cheers
__________________
Jan
"Whether one likes it or not, ALL the contents in our minds is subjective and the power of science comes from its ability to verify objectively the consistency of many individual subjectivities
Absolutely
Jan Didden
/ "Whether one likes it or not, ALL the contents in our minds is subjective........
Absolutely.
cheers
__________________
Jan
"Whether one likes it or not, ALL the contents in our minds is subjective and the power of science comes from its ability to verify objectively the consistency of many individual subjectivities
Absolutely
Jan Didden
slowmotion said:
If I understand you corretly (a long shot, I know!), you see science just as another tool to modify the subjectivism in our mind, NOT to get something that is objectively.
In that reasoning, a magician can have people 'believe' in something by misleading them with tricks, or a demagoge (thanks Pavel) can have people 'believe' in something by misleading them with words, and science can do so by misleading them with reasoning, but there is no basic difference between these 'tools'. Is that what you think? If so, I don't agree!
Jan Didden
Hi
These are mere words that we try to communicate with,
and words alone are not very effective. And I am not very good with words.
I have problems getting my meaning across, without writing a 5000 word essay,
which I'm not going to do 😉 . Our stereo systems are built upon science.
The way I (slowly) build and modify my stereo system is firmly rooted in science.
And I do not personally use cables as a way to "tune" my system. Even tho I hear
differences between different cables in my system. 😉
I split the quote in your signature, the first part I agree with,
the second part I "sort of" agree with. Words again.
I wonder if the thought processes in the "objective" part of science
is more subjective than we like to think.
After all , how many solutions are there to a given problem?
One? Two? Many? If there is many different solutions ,
in different shades of grey, which solution is "right"?
I don't know. I look at different posibilites, and pick one I like.
But of course I'm no scientist. 😉
cheers 😉
These are mere words that we try to communicate with,
and words alone are not very effective. And I am not very good with words.
I have problems getting my meaning across, without writing a 5000 word essay,
which I'm not going to do 😉 . Our stereo systems are built upon science.
The way I (slowly) build and modify my stereo system is firmly rooted in science.
And I do not personally use cables as a way to "tune" my system. Even tho I hear
differences between different cables in my system. 😉
I split the quote in your signature, the first part I agree with,
the second part I "sort of" agree with. Words again.
I wonder if the thought processes in the "objective" part of science
is more subjective than we like to think.
After all , how many solutions are there to a given problem?
One? Two? Many? If there is many different solutions ,
in different shades of grey, which solution is "right"?
I don't know. I look at different posibilites, and pick one I like.
But of course I'm no scientist. 😉
cheers 😉
How many solutions there are says nothing about science. There are many ways to skin a cat, but the result is all the same.
Just about every cable manufacturer uses some patented design or other and every one of them claims that his design is the best. And they are all correct. (We know that XLO and some of the Kimber cables work since they copied the design of the telephone companies. Phone companies only spend money on designs and technologies that work.) There are different ways to design a cable to achieve the same result. And that's to reduce transients first and inductance second, if I'm correct. Capacitance is usually irrelevant unless you design a cable for a particular purpose, like a phono cable. Then for flavour you can add some filter.
Just about every cable manufacturer uses some patented design or other and every one of them claims that his design is the best. And they are all correct. (We know that XLO and some of the Kimber cables work since they copied the design of the telephone companies. Phone companies only spend money on designs and technologies that work.) There are different ways to design a cable to achieve the same result. And that's to reduce transients first and inductance second, if I'm correct. Capacitance is usually irrelevant unless you design a cable for a particular purpose, like a phono cable. Then for flavour you can add some filter.
slowmotion said:
You make yourself pretty clear to me! Maybe I'm the one talking in riddles.
Lets take the cable example (at least stay somewhat on topic). Many different ones, all claiming to be the *nec plus ultra*, many apparently having different sounds (all right, nail me!😉 ). But none being the *right* one for everybody.
Science, on the other hand, claims and can *prove* to have a reasonably right solution. I hasten to say that that right solution is also context and time dependent. Typically what we see is that theories, over time, are modified, extended, amended, and cover more and more physical phenomena as we move through time.
Once in a very long while a theory is totally upset, but that is quite rare. Changes from the magnitude of going from an earth-centric system to a solar-centric one and on to a galaxy-centric one etc are *very* rare. So, science has something going for it that resembles at least a measure of *objectivity*. Many scientific theories are so generally accepted that we can consider them as *objectively correct*. As an example, the theories that predict how a transistor works are so well fitting to the physical phenomena that I would think they are accepted by 99.999% of all solid-state physicists.
OTOH I will confidently predict that in 10 years from now nobody will have developed the cable that ends all cables, one that is so clearly and convincingly good that nobody would want to use anything else.
Such a cable, if it would be developed (but it won't) would rapidly fall in price as millions were sold and become a throw-away commodity item. But, as I said, it won't happen.
Jan Didden
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