Before teh internetz the magazines fulfilled that role, and the same sort of rubbish went on, just not as quickly as today.analog_sa said:
What Brett said. I can't overemphasize the damage to common sense and reason perpetrated by the hack poets at Absolute Sound, Stereophile, and the like.
In fairness, many wires in the '70s DID give rise to audible differences. Especially the ones that caused amps to oscillate and flame out.
Amusingly, i first heard about cables from an entirely self-taught audiophile who never read mags and generally kept human contact to a minimum but spent hours conducting pointless, as i thought at the time, audio experiments. Being in the process of aquiring formal education i was trying to be politely dismissive. Maybe he was the mysterious "patient zero" and not Jean Hiraga as many think 🙂
analog_sa said:
A college professor of mine once told a group of freshman, "Don't try to reinvent the wheel, if you can think of it, it's already been thought out by someone else."
That audiophile you know of, could have used the precedents and saved himself a lot of time. That is unless his name was Edison or Tesla...
anatech said:
Hi Chris.As far as I'm conserned I have never said my equipment needs a special power cord to sound good.In fact I believe my equipment sounds extremely good with the power cords that came with it.What I have said was that between two power cables or any other cable,I can make a choice by listening to them.
Apparently "competence" precludes one from trusting one's own years. Or anyone else's.
Good our forefather hunters were not "competent"
Good our forefather hunters were not "competent"
Hi Panicos K,
We try so hard to make cables invisible when we design equipment to normal, accepted standards. It never fails that someone always cones up with a non-standard cable or equipment design that is off standard. Why do so many people gravitate to things that are off-standard? They create special situations that are merrily mis-applied, then held up as prove for some off-beat claim.
Most intelligent people come up with a belief system that allows them to accept new ideas if they roughly agree with what they already know. That is especially true if the source of that information has been known to be accurate many time before.
To disbelieve anyone or any ideas out of hand is reasonably foolish. You are then accepting a handicap without good reason. Mind you, someone who accepts most of what is said to them without any consideration can be said to be "gullible". There is a happy middle ground there. Also, ideas can be re-evaluated from time to time as newer information becomes available.
It's a sad reality that dishonest people misguide otherwise intelligent people in order to sell "snake oil" or to do unnecessary work on their equipment, often damaging it.
-Chris
Never questioned that at all.
In my view, that proves there is a defect somewhere. Either a cable is just plan bad (defective) or designed incorrectly. Could even be those lovely oversize RCA connectors that destroy the socket so that normal connectors never make proper contact ever again.
We try so hard to make cables invisible when we design equipment to normal, accepted standards. It never fails that someone always cones up with a non-standard cable or equipment design that is off standard. Why do so many people gravitate to things that are off-standard? They create special situations that are merrily mis-applied, then held up as prove for some off-beat claim.
Sure it does! You can test something in a competent manner. You can learn enough of a skill to be competent. In fact, even if you don't know much, you can be competent up to that point.
Most intelligent people come up with a belief system that allows them to accept new ideas if they roughly agree with what they already know. That is especially true if the source of that information has been known to be accurate many time before.
To disbelieve anyone or any ideas out of hand is reasonably foolish. You are then accepting a handicap without good reason. Mind you, someone who accepts most of what is said to them without any consideration can be said to be "gullible". There is a happy middle ground there. Also, ideas can be re-evaluated from time to time as newer information becomes available.
It's a sad reality that dishonest people misguide otherwise intelligent people in order to sell "snake oil" or to do unnecessary work on their equipment, often damaging it.
-Chris
Panicos K said:
Hi Chris
I do not dissagree with you.But,IMO,for competence to acquire substance some preconditions are needed.First and most simple,two people are needed to agree on something,then work together,try and prove something.When they do,they give competence to their achievement.It is preconception that I do not accept as proof of competence.Also IMO,these two people in order to stand a chance to succeed,they need to trust and respect each other.
All the best
I haven't seen any evidence that supports this conclusion. I think that opinion and proof are mutually exclusive.
John
The 47 labs cables seem to be an ultimate slap in the face to the oversized mentality.
http://www.sakurasystems.com/products/47cabling.html
"Sufficiently thin solid-core single strand wire without plating. These are the necessary and sufficient requirements for a conductor suitable for audio cables. In other words, other characteristics do not matter. "
http://www.sakurasystems.com/products/47cabling.html
"Sufficiently thin solid-core single strand wire without plating. These are the necessary and sufficient requirements for a conductor suitable for audio cables. In other words, other characteristics do not matter. "
anatech said:
I have also agreed with this many times by saying that I accept and respect all known facts,and that I believe that engineers know everything everything about all known facts.It is my belief though that knowledge and information does not stop here.
Hi John,
Let me break things down for you then. Point out what you disagree with.
1. Properly designed audio equipment is normally (on average) designed in such a way that the average, good quality cables in use in the industry will provide optimal performance.
AC Power cords
2. In the case of power supply expectations, the condition of the power supply grid is unknown. An assumption is made then that assumes that wiring and outlets are up to the national safety code as a least common denominator. Noise is expected to exist on the power supply. The power supply inside the equipment is then designed to exclude this outside supply noise from the power delivered to the internal circuitry. If this is not done, the equipment in question fails the "properly designed" condition.
Signal cables between equipment
3. Where signals are run between pieces of equipment, there is no guarantee what the impedance will be. The assumption must be made that the equipment sending or receiving the signal will operate at expected industry standards. If the equipment does not fall into this specification, it fails the "properly designed" condition. The conditions of expected impedances ensure that a cable designed to these expected standards does not affect the signal as it is transferred from one piece of equipment to another. If the cable manages to modify the signal in any way, being a passive component, the impedances of that cable are (by definition) well out of standard, or that the shield is not up to standard. The environment may dictate a cable with a higher level of shielding. This indicates an operating environment that is out of the expected norm. This cable must not modify the signal passing through it.
Speaker cable
4. Speaker cables should not modify the signal beyond expected minimal resistive losses within the accepted audio band (20 Hz to 20 KHz). Some small phase shift at the higher extreme may be unavoidable due to the reality of transferring current through wire. Cables have been designed and sold that exhibit excessive capacitance that can destabilize an amplifier. I'm sure that cable possessing high inductance is also sold. Still, these cables are, by definition, not within the expected norm. Also, the use of a lighter gage of wire than would be generally acceptable is excluded as well.
All this is supposed to allow the equipment to perform to it's specifications (and designer's expectations) using average, good AC cords, quality wire and interconnects in an average installation. There are slightly different expectations between vacuum tube and solid state equipment due to the characteristics inherent in the technology used.
So, what do you disagree with here? Having been in the audio industry for so long, I feel I do have a good understanding how this stuff goes together.
-Chris 🙂
Firstly, I can't agree with this. An opinion can be proved correct for one. A "professional opinion" is often requested in the hunt for prove of something. These are certainly not mutually exclusive.
Well, since you didn't say what you are accepting or not, there is no way to even understand what you mean here. I can look at many statements, ignore what I want, and come up with the same statement you just gave. You basically voiced an opinion without any backup argument. At least I put my statement in context.
Let me break things down for you then. Point out what you disagree with.
1. Properly designed audio equipment is normally (on average) designed in such a way that the average, good quality cables in use in the industry will provide optimal performance.
AC Power cords
2. In the case of power supply expectations, the condition of the power supply grid is unknown. An assumption is made then that assumes that wiring and outlets are up to the national safety code as a least common denominator. Noise is expected to exist on the power supply. The power supply inside the equipment is then designed to exclude this outside supply noise from the power delivered to the internal circuitry. If this is not done, the equipment in question fails the "properly designed" condition.
Signal cables between equipment
3. Where signals are run between pieces of equipment, there is no guarantee what the impedance will be. The assumption must be made that the equipment sending or receiving the signal will operate at expected industry standards. If the equipment does not fall into this specification, it fails the "properly designed" condition. The conditions of expected impedances ensure that a cable designed to these expected standards does not affect the signal as it is transferred from one piece of equipment to another. If the cable manages to modify the signal in any way, being a passive component, the impedances of that cable are (by definition) well out of standard, or that the shield is not up to standard. The environment may dictate a cable with a higher level of shielding. This indicates an operating environment that is out of the expected norm. This cable must not modify the signal passing through it.
Speaker cable
4. Speaker cables should not modify the signal beyond expected minimal resistive losses within the accepted audio band (20 Hz to 20 KHz). Some small phase shift at the higher extreme may be unavoidable due to the reality of transferring current through wire. Cables have been designed and sold that exhibit excessive capacitance that can destabilize an amplifier. I'm sure that cable possessing high inductance is also sold. Still, these cables are, by definition, not within the expected norm. Also, the use of a lighter gage of wire than would be generally acceptable is excluded as well.
All this is supposed to allow the equipment to perform to it's specifications (and designer's expectations) using average, good AC cords, quality wire and interconnects in an average installation. There are slightly different expectations between vacuum tube and solid state equipment due to the characteristics inherent in the technology used.
So, what do you disagree with here? Having been in the audio industry for so long, I feel I do have a good understanding how this stuff goes together.
-Chris 🙂
We ARE the problem.😀
And for the millionth time, trust your ears. Distrust your brain. Evolution has wired you to make errors in the direction of sensing things that aren't there.
Hi SY,
I'd say, don't obsess! Just sit back and enjoy the music. Life is too short otherwise.
-Chris
Can't argue that!
I'd say, don't obsess! Just sit back and enjoy the music. Life is too short otherwise.
-Chris
jlsem said:
But fortunately all of Lab 47's creations are easy to diy to probably better than 95% of the originals at 10% of the cost. I am personally quite thankful for their ideas although the thin solid core speaker cable is far from innovative.
Panicos K said:
If you feed a symmetrical signal to my amp you can't make choice by listening to power cables, if all of them are healthy.
My Pyramid-V prototype was used for auditioning of speakers during AES in San Francisco, in 2008. Since it had TRS outs only, we borrowed some probe wires with crocodile clips to connect speakers to my cables. We were joking, "That probe wires were already broken up because they sounded sooo gooood" 😀
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