That is not correct. You left out all of the important qualifiers. I expect that sort of argument from the faith-based folks, but not from you.
Start with that incorrect assumption and your conclusions will be (as they are) incorrect. I've listed the qualifiers so many times over the years that you can easily find them in a forum search, if that's what you want to do.
But, please bear with me, you were arguing with bias effects and Olive/Toole have shown that even the quite distinct differences of different loudspeaker models would not prevent against strong bias impact if tested sighted.
I assume that you mean with "important qualifiers" something like the known hearing thresholds.
So i still find it an interesting question, just because if there is no way to learn to deal with the several bias mechanism than a controlled blind test would be the only possibility.
Wishes
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Maybe this is why powered speakers sound so good? No cable at all (or so short as to not matter)
No cable is better than any cable, right?
Well that and someone who actually knows what to test for choosing the cable, the filters coming before the amp, and the amp being directly connected to drivers. Of course if this same theory is used by someone who has no idea how to test a system the theory will work against you and you will end up with a poorly calibrated system.
You found one qualifier. There are several more. But in general, yes, if there's an extraordinary claim, a blind test of some sort is mandatory before making such a claim (if one is to be taken more seriously than my then-6-year-old sister's claim of having a hundred invisible horses).
The control of that test will need to be proportional to the outlandishness of the claim. If someone claims to hear a difference from a 3dB level shift, that's not outlandish. If someone uses a marginally stable amplifier designed by a magician and changing the cable seems to change the sound, sure, that not unreasonable and the bar isn't that high. That's been acknowledged about 200 times in this thread. So what? But asserting a difference because of factors outside of known physics or despite scale differences orders of magnitude below any reasonable threshold... well, I hope you're happy with your invisible horses.
The control of that test will need to be proportional to the outlandishness of the claim. If someone claims to hear a difference from a 3dB level shift, that's not outlandish. If someone uses a marginally stable amplifier designed by a magician and changing the cable seems to change the sound, sure, that not unreasonable and the bar isn't that high. That's been acknowledged about 200 times in this thread. So what? But asserting a difference because of factors outside of known physics or despite scale differences orders of magnitude below any reasonable threshold... well, I hope you're happy with your invisible horses.
It would be hard to imagine they recommend the chip amps, but some do. In a DIY forum the cost of cabling is arguably a red herring. A pair of small gauge solid silver interconnects can be thrown together with Audionote connectors for the price of a pair of Levis. A Risch Belden design even less. There is essentially no social 'payload' or monetary bragging rights.
@ SY,
if you could tell me a phrase that safeguards against all possible omissions of things we both know about, but still doesn´t take a whole page i´ll be more than happy to use it.
Again, Olive and Toole have shown that even the distinct differences of loudspeakers (afair in the range of several db´s, broadband peaks and dips etc.) will not prevent rating _and_ ranking of these loudspeakers to be strongly influenced by bias mechanisms.
Not an invinsible horse i´d think
So, if we are not able to learn to deal with all the possible bias mechanism, why should the passive network approach work?
Wishes
if you could tell me a phrase that safeguards against all possible omissions of things we both know about, but still doesn´t take a whole page i´ll be more than happy to use it.
Again, Olive and Toole have shown that even the distinct differences of loudspeakers (afair in the range of several db´s, broadband peaks and dips etc.) will not prevent rating _and_ ranking of these loudspeakers to be strongly influenced by bias mechanisms.
Not an invinsible horse i´d think
So, if we are not able to learn to deal with all the possible bias mechanism, why should the passive network approach work?
Wishes
Athough the reciprocal is true as well, and although the GEB motivation is not so difficult to identify as to be worth questioning about, to strictly answer your question: to me it's like supporting cancer research. Worth the effort, so far not much success, but still hoping to stop this disease for good
.
Since we can't cure 100% of cancers, why cure any?
One thing is for sure- people can hear frequency response changes on the order of magnitude of 1 dB. So if two cables cause frequency response differences because of, ahhhh, unconventional engineering in the chain, EQing the system to remove that difference is far and away the most likely way to eliminate any audible differences. For sure, it takes the claim of audibility from plausible to imaginary horses. At that point, it's up to the imaginative to do the demonstrating.
Why do you feel it's not? You haven't bothered to investigate that possibility.
So homeopathy, astrology, dowsing, "free energy," and clairvoyance work. 'Cause after all, lots of people believe them.
Both Curley and I can hear 'it' . It is important to me as an audio professional, not to exclude what is obvious to others, and me, in an audio environment, such as a hi fi show. We used $5000 sets of cables at the RMAF. We tried cheaper $1000 or so cables, but they were not as good sounding, but they looked just as impressive. Of course, we have to make a living at making our audio products to sound the best possible to a number of people who have never heard the audio system that we are presenting, and therefore are less 'forgiving' of its potential flaws.
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