Re: Speaker cables

[Justin Ulysses Morse]

The real problem is that the statement is fundamentally meaningless.
Which cables? Imagine a world wherein all copper conductors sound
exactly the same. Still, "Cables can be distinguished" would, by your
logic, be true if some cables are painted different colors or if some
cables aren't made of copper. Are you suggesting that the fact you can
distinguish solid copper cables from solid rubber cables is proof that
you can distinguish solid copper cables from stranded copper cables?
Your "logic" just doesn't mean anything. Try something along the lines
of "some copper conductors can be audible distinguished." Then you
might THINK you have a logically solid claim but you'd still have to to
demonstrate that the distinction was made audibly and not by other
means, and that it wasn't something other than copper that was being
audibly distinguished (like corrosion or impurities or dielectric).
And once you proved that grand hypothesis in one circumstance, then yes
you could shout it from the mountaintop but you'd still have to answer
questions like, "did the two conductors have radically different bulk
resistance? Was there something wrong with your amplifier?" in
addition to demonstrating the credibility of your tests.

As for (2), I don't think you can claim objective definition of what
constitutes relevant listening experience. If you haven't conducted
strict double-blind level-matched difference tests then your results
will be viewed as biased opinions. If you haven't conducted
"subjective" (sighted) comparisons that include visual cues such as
packaging and price lists, then your tests will be viewed by others as
inconclusive.

ulysses

James Boyk > wrote:

> Well, it's not a religious discussion. Either cables can be
> distinguished or they can't. The problems are--
>
> (1) Some participants don't understand a logical point. "Cables can be
> distinguished" is held to be true if there exist ANY cables which in ANY
> circumstances can be distinguished. This is simply the meaning of the
> words; but it's a point which some people don't understand. To prove
> that "cables can NOT be distinguished," it would be necessary to prove
> that there are NO cables which in ANY circumstances can be told apart.
>
> (2) Most people don't have any relevant listening experience.
>
> James Boyk
>

[James Boyk]

Pardon me, but I don't think you understood what I wrote.

James Boyk

[Justin Ulysses Morse]

James Boyk > wrote:

> only the former is relevant to the general statement being made by
> many: That No Cables Can Ever Be Distinguished.

Many? I don't think I've ever heard ANYBODY make that claim. Ever.

ulysses

[James Boyk]

James Boyk wrote: >>...the general statement being made by many: That No
Cables Can Ever Be Distinguished.

Justin Ulysses Morse wrote: Many? I don't think I've ever heard ANYBODY
make that claim. Ever.


If that's the case, what's all the to-do about? It sure sounds as though
Nousaine and others are saying **Cables Can't Make A Difference**! If
they're not saying that, what *are* they saying; and what's the
disagreement?

James Boyk

[Justin Ulysses Morse]

James Boyk > wrote:

> If that's the case, what's all the to-do about? It sure sounds as though
> Nousaine and others are saying **Cables Can't Make A Difference**! If
> they're not saying that, what *are* they saying; and what's the
> disagreement?

I think they're saying (and I'm agreeing) that reasonably competent
cables don't make appreciable sonic differences. That if you hear a
meaningful difference between two speaker cables, then either one of
them is defective, or you're deceiving yourself. That isn't really
saying a lot since there's plenty of room for debate about what
constitutes an "appreciable" or "meaningful" sonic difference, and what
constitutes "defective" cable. I'd say that a "meaningful" difference
is one that justifies the price difference between said cable and
another suitable cable. I'd say defective cable is cable that has
enough impedance (whether it's caused by corrosion/abuse or by design)
to make a sonic impact. IF you can come up with some phenomenon other
than "impedance" that changes the transfer characteristic of a cable,
please present a paper at the next AES.

100 feet of 24-gage cable for some 250W speakers is "defective" cable
because it's the wrong cable for the job, regardless of what kind of
cable it is. When you compare that 100-ft 24ga. cable to say 3 feet of
00ga. gold-plated platinum, the difference you hear doesn't say
anything about the importance of good cables, beyond what any competent
engineer should already know about good old Ohm's Law.

On the other hand, maybe you can measure and convince yourself you hear
the difference between two brands of good, low-impedance speaker cable
because one has 100 milli-ohm bulk resistance and the other has 110
milli-ohms, thereby generating a response difference of 1dB at 25kHz.
If both cables are on the shelf next to each other at the store I
happen to shop, and they're the same price, I might consider your
suggestion on the cable. But if one cable is $0.10/ft and the other is
$10/ft, I'm smart enough to stop and consider the relevance of
1dB@25kHz in a system that includes real-world speakers, real-world
room, and a real-world budget. In that context, the difference is not
meaningful.

ulysses

[James Boyk]

Justin Ulysses Morse wrote:
> I think they're saying (and I'm agreeing) that reasonably competent cables don't make appreciable sonic differences.

This kind of statement is extremely vulnerable to becoming part of
circular reasoning. Suppose you were presented with two cables which you
agreed did sound different. IF in that circumstance you would then
assert that one or both cables were IPSO FACTO *not* competent, you
would have converted the assertion above into a meaningless one. Saying
it another way, for the assertion above to be meaningful, you must
supply IN ADVANCE OF AUDITIONING a criterion for what makes a cable
"reasonably competent."

Something like this happened in 1970. Peter Walker, the founder of Quad,
repeatedly and famously asserted that no two "well-designed amplifiers"
could be told apart in blind listening, provided that neither was
clipping. A careful double-blind test was carried out in which several
listeners could in fact reliably distinguish some of the amplifiers.
Walker accepted this result as real, but took the escape hatch of saying
that making a "well-designed" amp must be harder than he'd realized, and
that some of the amps must not have been well-designed, the proof being
that they could be told apart. He didn't seem to realize that this was
circular reasoning. The escape hatch was open to him because he'd not
defined *in advance*, in a way *independent of auditioning*, what
"well-designed" meant.



> ...I'd say defective cable is cable that has enough impedance ...to
make a sonic impact.

This *almost* provides the circularity I was talking about. You're
saying that if it makes an impact on the sound through its impedance,
it's defective. Given this definition, it's a logical IMPOSSIBILITY for
any non-defective cable to affect the sound-----unless it does so
through some aspect of design having nothing to do with its impedance.



> ...IF you can come up with some phenomenon other than "impedance" that changes the transfer characteristic of a cable,
> please present a paper at the next AES.

This completes the circularity: You now assert that only impedance can
affect the sound quality of a cable.

You've now given a perfect demonstration that your assertion at the top
is meaningless.


James Boyk

[Nousaine]

James Boyk wrote:



>James Boyk wrote: >>...the general statement being made by many: That No
>Cables Can Ever Be Distinguished.
>
>Justin Ulysses Morse wrote: Many? I don't think I've ever heard ANYBODY
>make that claim. Ever.
>
>
>If that's the case, what's all the to-do about? It sure sounds as though
>Nousaine and others are saying **Cables Can't Make A Difference**! If
>they're not saying that, what *are* they saying; and what's the
>disagreement?
>
>James Boyk

Oh it's easy to show that cabling can make a difference. I disconnected my
speaker leads the other day and there was quite a large drop in level.

OTOH no wire-sound proponent has ever shown in a replicable experiment that any
human subject has shown an ability to distinguish cables of nominally competent
capability for the job at hand in a modern audio system by sound alone.

I've seen a demo where 100 feet of 30 gauge wire-wrap wire made a noticable
change in volume but I don't consider that to be nominally competent wire for
the job of connecting loudspeakers.

It's simply not my style to buy the proposition that some cable, somewhere
affects sound quality until some one produces the evidence that it does. And,
no, anecdotes aren't good enough.

[Nousaine]

James Boyk wrote:


>Justin Ulysses Morse wrote:
>> I think they're saying (and I'm agreeing) that reasonably competent cables
>don't make appreciable sonic differences.
>
>This kind of statement is extremely vulnerable to becoming part of
>circular reasoning. Suppose you were presented with two cables which you
>agreed did sound different.

First of all you have to find those cables which no one has so far. And, of
course, you would have checked to see if the response of the signal being
delivered to the loudspeakers was matched within 0.2 dB over the spectrum.

IF in that circumstance you would then
>assert that one or both cables were IPSO FACTO *not* competent, you
>would have converted the assertion above into a meaningless one. Saying
>it another way, for the assertion above to be meaningful, you must
>supply IN ADVANCE OF AUDITIONING a criterion for what makes a cable
>"reasonably competent."

Nominally competent for any audio product is response errors no greater than
+/- 0.1 dB overe the audio spectrum, clipping less than 1% of the time, noise
levels that are not audible at the listening position and no operating
irregularities.

>
>Something like this happened in 1970. Peter Walker, the founder of Quad,
>repeatedly and famously asserted that no two "well-designed amplifiers"
>could be told apart in blind listening, provided that neither was
>clipping. A careful double-blind test was carried out in which several
>listeners could in fact reliably distinguish some of the amplifiers.
>Walker accepted this result as real, but took the escape hatch of saying
>that making a "well-designed" amp must be harder than he'd realized, and
>that some of the amps must not have been well-designed, the proof being
>that they could be told apart. He didn't seem to realize that this was
>circular reasoning. The escape hatch was open to him because he'd not
>defined *in advance*, in a way *independent of auditioning*, what
>"well-designed" meant.

Beginning with Toole & Masters in 1976 there have been more than 2 dozen
bias-controlled listening experiments that shows Walker wasn't that far from
being right.


> > ...I'd say defective cable is cable that has enough impedance ...to
>make a sonic impact.
>
>This *almost* provides the circularity I was talking about. You're
>saying that if it makes an impact on the sound through its impedance,
>it's defective. Given this definition, it's a logical IMPOSSIBILITY for
>any non-defective cable to affect the sound-----unless it does so
>through some aspect of design having nothing to do with its impedance.

But that's the general wire-sound argument. "These wires sound better than
those even when you can't measure response errors."


>> ...IF you can come up with some phenomenon other than "impedance" that
>changes the transfer characteristic of a cable,
>> please present a paper at the next AES.
>
>This completes the circularity: You now assert that only impedance can
>affect the sound quality of a cable.

What else would you suggest? But if you can find wire than can be audibly
identified that HASN'T changed frequency response and is still audible then we
can talk.

Your argument is the 'debate' trick. "If I can argue hard enough then people
might stop asking me for evidence about wire-sound."

It simply is no one's fault but their own that the wire industry and consumer
base hasn't produced a single verified experiment where wire that hasn't
changed known causal factors (level, noise and frequency response) has been
audibly distinguishable let alone improved sound quality.

Indeed it's pretty hard to find a broke-wire that isn't literally broken.

>
>You've now given a perfect demonstration that your assertion at the top
>is meaningless.
>
>
>James Boyk

[James Boyk]

Nousaine wrote:
> ...And, of course, you would have checked to see if the response of the signal being
> delivered to the loudspeakers was matched within 0.2 dB over the spectrum.

Why 0.2 dB? A broadband difference of 0.2 dB is adequate to make you
think the louder one is better even though you can't tell it's louder.


> Nominally competent for any audio product is response errors no greater than
> +/- 0.1 dB overe the audio spectrum, clipping less than 1% of the time, noise
> levels that are not audible at the listening position and no operating
> irregularities.

Will you stand by this? No back-tracking? This is your once and for all
complete definition of "competent"?

(Do you know about Richard Heyser's black box of many years ago that
measured *perfect* on all standard tests and sounded truly awful?)



> ...there have been more than 2 dozen bias-controlled listening experiments that shows Walker wasn't that far from
> being right.

"not that far from being right" = "wrong"

And by the way, how many of these experiments used a live mike feed?
Please cite the experiments.



> It simply is no one's fault but their own that the wire industry and consumer
> base hasn't produced a single verified experiment where wire that hasn't
> changed known causal factors (level, noise and frequency response) has been
> audibly distinguishable let alone improved sound quality.

But wires *do* have different frequency responses---when in-circuit with
specific amps & speakers. THat's part of what it means to be that wire.

jb

[Rob Adelman]

Nousaine wrote:


> Oh it's easy to show that cabling can make a difference. I disconnected my
> speaker leads the other day and there was quite a large drop in level.

L.o.l.

Technically, anything *could* make a difference. But you have to have
priorities. I.m.o. different speaker cables, assuming they are adequate
for the job (right gauge for a given length) would have the least effect
of anything you could do that would affect the systems sound. Well,
perhaps right after different power cords...

[Justin Ulysses Morse]

Of course you're absolutely right, James, and I knew that while I was
writing it. It's a very difficult argument to state because there's so
much semantic ambiguity when you're talking about subjective phenomena.
I can say things like "reasonably competent speaker wire" which to me
excludes a great number of inappropriate conductors and I can conclude
that variance of "reasonably competent speaker wire" does not hold
"meaningful" sonic consequences in any non-imaginary context. But
there will always be, in opposite ends of the room, one fella who
thinks .01dB at 50kHz is "meaningful" and another fella who thinks wire
he pulled off of his spiral notebook is "reasonably competent speaker
wire" and in tandem they will conclude I'm full of ****.

In the real world, I know that I can pay a modest amount of money for
any number of cables that will do what they're supposed to do, which is
carry electrons from my amp to my speakers and back again without
dropping too many along the way. Yes, I know that if I'm a cheapskate
I'll have to choose between wire that's too skinny, too dirty, or too
poorly-made and will not do the job adequately. Using the modicum of
common sense I posess (whatever that is) and a little bit of experience
and knowledge, I can shell out $0.75/ft instead of $0.10/ft and avoid
those pitfalls. Using still more common sense, experience, and
knowledge, I can decline the salesman's offer for wire that costs
$3.00/ft or more (much more) if I know that the several milliohms
improvement in cable impedance and the quarter-decibel
frequency-dependent attenuation it prevents will be inconsequential in
my control room where my transducers are set up six feet from my
amplifier.

So if you want to skip the lines I wrote about context and real-world
equipment and budgets, yes I will concede the circularity of my
reasoning. My argument states, essentially, that any cables you find
that are not sonically transparent are defective for the sole reason
that they're not sonically transparent. I'll stand by that statement
anyway though. If you could name a specific wire that you find NOT to
be "sonically transparent" but still not "defective" I'd love to hear
about it.

So we're clear, it's never been my position that speaker cables don't
make an audible difference in sound. It's been my position that
speaker cable that doesn't make an audible difference is inexpensive,
readily available, and doesn't require a tremendous amount of expertise
to separate from those that do. Among competent audio professionals.

Now do you want to debate the definition of a competent audio
professional, so I can tell you it's somebody who knows where to buy
cheap, sonically transparent speaker cable?

ulysses

James Boyk > wrote:

> Justin Ulysses Morse wrote:
> > I think they're saying (and I'm agreeing) that reasonably competent cables
> > don't make appreciable sonic differences.
>
> This kind of statement is extremely vulnerable to becoming part of
> circular reasoning. Suppose you were presented with two cables which you
> agreed did sound different. IF in that circumstance you would then
> assert that one or both cables were IPSO FACTO *not* competent, you
> would have converted the assertion above into a meaningless one. Saying
> it another way, for the assertion above to be meaningful, you must
> supply IN ADVANCE OF AUDITIONING a criterion for what makes a cable
> "reasonably competent."
>
> Something like this happened in 1970. Peter Walker, the founder of Quad,
> repeatedly and famously asserted that no two "well-designed amplifiers"
> could be told apart in blind listening, provided that neither was
> clipping. A careful double-blind test was carried out in which several
> listeners could in fact reliably distinguish some of the amplifiers.
> Walker accepted this result as real, but took the escape hatch of saying
> that making a "well-designed" amp must be harder than he'd realized, and
> that some of the amps must not have been well-designed, the proof being
> that they could be told apart. He didn't seem to realize that this was
> circular reasoning. The escape hatch was open to him because he'd not
> defined *in advance*, in a way *independent of auditioning*, what
> "well-designed" meant.
>
>
>
> > ...I'd say defective cable is cable that has enough impedance ...to
> make a sonic impact.
>
> This *almost* provides the circularity I was talking about. You're
> saying that if it makes an impact on the sound through its impedance,
> it's defective. Given this definition, it's a logical IMPOSSIBILITY for
> any non-defective cable to affect the sound-----unless it does so
> through some aspect of design having nothing to do with its impedance.
>
>
>
> > ...IF you can come up with some phenomenon other than "impedance" that
> > changes the transfer characteristic of a cable,
> > please present a paper at the next AES.
>
> This completes the circularity: You now assert that only impedance can
> affect the sound quality of a cable.
>
> You've now given a perfect demonstration that your assertion at the top
> is meaningless.
>
>
> James Boyk
>
>
>

[Justin Ulysses Morse]

James Boyk > wrote:

> (Do you know about Richard Heyser's black box of many years ago that
> measured *perfect* on all standard tests and sounded truly awful?)

No I don't, but this says more about "many years ago" and "all standard
tests" than anything else.

> > ...there have been more than 2 dozen bias-controlled listening experiments
> > that shows Walker wasn't that far from
> > being right.
>
> "not that far from being right" = "wrong"

Suppose the tests were conducted today? Would he still be wrong? I
doubt it.

> But wires *do* have different frequency responses---when in-circuit with
> specific amps & speakers. THat's part of what it means to be that wire.

Okay, but do they have (or cause) frequency response differences that
are signifigant? Honestly?


ulysses

[Nousaine]

James Boyk wrote

>Nousaine wrote:
>> ...And, of course, you would have checked to see if the response of the
>signal being
>> delivered to the loudspeakers was matched within 0.2 dB over the spectrum.
>
>Why 0.2 dB? A broadband difference of 0.2 dB is adequate to make you
>think the louder one is better even though you can't tell it's louder.
>
>
>> Nominally competent for any audio product is response errors no greater
>than
>> +/- 0.1 dB overe the audio spectrum, clipping less than 1% of the time,
>noise
>> levels that are not audible at the listening position and no operating
>> irregularities.
>
>Will you stand by this? No back-tracking? This is your once and for all
>complete definition of "competent"?

That's generally accepted criteria. Do you have anything to add.

>
>(Do you know about Richard Heyser's black box of many years ago that
>measured *perfect* on all standard tests and sounded truly awful?)

What standard tests? I've 'heard' about this but have never seen a documented
reference to it.

>> ...there have been more than 2 dozen bias-controlled listening experiments
>that shows Walker wasn't that far from
>> being right.
>
>"not that far from being right" = "wrong"

Actually I hadn't heard of the anecdote you referenced. I was aware of the QUAD
tests of 1978 where 6 high-profile listeners were unable to identify amplifiers
by sound alone.

The first report I have a copy of was the 1976 Masters/Toole experiment where
listeners were unable to identify amplifiers by sound alone as well.

>
>And by the way, how many of these experiments used a live mike feed?
>Please cite the experiments.

Noen that I'm aware of. So what? Neither do the great majority of anecdotal
reports of amp and wire sound. In fact, I've only heard of a single
undocumented account of such a report.


>> It simply is no one's fault but their own that the wire industry and
>consumer
>> base hasn't produced a single verified experiment where wire that hasn't
>> changed known causal factors (level, noise and frequency response) has been
>> audibly distinguishable let alone improved sound quality.
>
>But wires *do* have different frequency responses---when in-circuit with
>specific amps & speakers. THat's part of what it means to be that wire.

That seems to be seldom the case. Of the 2 dozen published amplifier accounts
only 2 documented such effects. Both of those used high output impedance
amplifiers which have fallen out of general use because of those effects.

I've conducted a half dozen controlled listening tests on wires and have yet to
find any cable that exhibited such effects, even the one with an attached
'network.' Can you cite examples?

IMO one really has to screw up a wire to obtain such effects. Not that it's not
possible to make such a cable; but when its so easy to make a perfectly
transparent cable why bother to make one that functions as an equalizer or
could only be effectively used with a single loudspeaker model?

[Nousaine]

Justin Ulysses Morse wrote:


.....snips....

>So if you want to skip the lines I wrote about context and real-world
>equipment and budgets, yes I will concede the circularity of my
>reasoning. My argument states, essentially, that any cables you find
>that are not sonically transparent are defective for the sole reason
>that they're not sonically transparent.

>I'll stand by that statement
>anyway though. If you could name a specific wire that you find NOT to
>be "sonically transparent" but still not "defective" I'd love to hear
>about it.

>So we're clear, it's never been my position that speaker cables don't
>make an audible difference in sound. It's been my position that
>speaker cable that doesn't make an audible difference is inexpensive,
>readily available, and doesn't require a tremendous amount of expertise
>to separate from those that do. Among competent audio professionals.
>
>Now do you want to debate the definition of a competent audio
>professional, so I can tell you it's somebody who knows where to buy
>cheap, sonically transparent speaker cable?
>
>ulysses

I'm in agreement here. And would like to point out that in spite of the
oft-referenced sonic differences and improvements cited for interconnecting and
speaker cables NOT ONE reviewer, retailer, wholesaler, manufacturer or
enthusiast has ever delivered a single example of any commercially available
audio cable that produces a difference (let alone improvement) in sound quality
when used in a nominally competent playback system.

I, personally, have tried to get to the nexus of wire-sound. Being unable to
'hear' differences myself under bias controlled conditions I have asked
enthusiasts and salesmen who claimed to hear these differences to verify these
claims, sometmes with nothing more than a blanket placed over the speaker/amp
terminals. NO VERIFIED AUDIBILITY.

I've traveled half way across the country at my own expense on a challenge from
a manufacturer where he was going to "show me differences." When I arrived he
refused to conduct a bias controlled test.

There is simply no reliable evidence that reasonably well made wire is NOT
completely transparent sonically. Which is basically its intended function.

[LeBaron & Alrich]

James Boyk > wrote:

> It sure sounds as though
> Nousaine and others are saying **Cables Can't Make A Difference**! If
> they're not saying that, what *are* they saying; and what's the
> disagreement?

Try this: "So far, when subjected to blind, bias-free tests by Mr.
Nousaine, no individual has been able to distinguish between fancy
big-bucks-per-inch cable and inexpensive,
off-the-hardware-store-shelf-cable, all braggadoccio aside".

Reading is FUNdamental. Weeding is unavoidable.

--
ha

[LeBaron & Alrich]

Justin Ulysses Morse > wrote:

> That if you hear a
> meaningful difference between two speaker cables, then either one of
> them is defective, or you're deceiving yourself.

I hear a really big differene between surgical tubing and garden hose.
Honest I do. Even blind drunk stoned.

--
ha

[[email protected]]

James Boyk > wrote:

> (Do you know about Richard Heyser's black box of many years ago that
> measured *perfect* on all standard tests and sounded truly awful?)

I've never heard of this either. Tell us more about this story!

Benj

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