AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - Comments regarding: Cables, Hearing, Stuff!!

From: chung
Date: 4/7/2004 1:09 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

S888Wheel wrote:
From: chung
Date: 4/7/2004 8:34 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

S888Wheel wrote:

The conditions are as they have always been:

Levels matched to +/- 0.1dB at 100Hz, 1kHz and 10kHz at the speaker
terminals

Just as I thought. You really didn't want to compare anyone's favorite
audiophile cables without messing with their sound.

If you know of any audiophile cable that has trouble matching to those
numbers against a 12-ga home depot zip cord, do share that information
with us. You will be doing us a favor by exposing those cables that have
trouble passing the signal without coloration.

I have never looked into it but I recall some "objectivists" claiming that
some
audiophile cables do have audible colorations. That was why I made my
comment
in the first place.

Of course you realize that the cable can be constructed in such a way as
to be truly audibly different than others.

Yes, I do realize that. I also realize that Stewarts proposed bet would not
have protected him from such cables being chosen for comparison. If you re-read
my comment this should become obvious.

Heck, simply have a resistor
in series with one of the leads; that will give you a different sounding
cable. Those intentionally colored cables, however, never were
advertized as having intentional colorations; instead they were praised
as revealing, dynamic, accurate, etc. Also the degree of coloration is
now a strong function of the speaker, so I wonder why anyone would call
something that is intentionally, uncontrollably, inaccurate "audiophile".

The conditions have always been there,

They were not there in the post Stewart made that I commented upon. The person
he was addressing is new to RAHE and may not be aware of the laundry list of
assumed conditions of Stewart's bet.

and they are fair, since the vast
majority of cables satisfy that requirement easily. Without those
conditions, the bet is no longer a bet, since someone can bring in a
cable with resistors, or for that matter, a cable that is broken. We can
all tell a broken cable from a good one.

The point I was making was simple. Stewart made an offer for a bet to someone
who may not be aware of all those assumed conditions. Had the person taken the
bet as Stewart offered it, Stewart would have been in a position to either
change the bet he posted or loose 10,000 bucks.

Test protocol double-blind

Pass criterion is 15 or more correct out of 20 trials

As it stands you could easily loose.

I don't think so, and unlike you, I'm putting my money where my mouth
is.
--

Nah, you just changed the rules as I thought you would. *As it stood* you
really weren't offering a bet.

Why not? Which condition do you take issue with?

Matching at different frequencies. If a "favorite audiophile cable" has to
be
EQed to sound the same then it does sound different to begin with. Stewart
did
say that one could not tell the difference between zip cord and one's
favorite
audiohhile cable.

Do you lose your
ability to tell cables apart once you don't know what you are listening
to?

I don't know really. I do know that the cables I have were cited blind as
having made a difference in the sound. The sample was only one though.

Who cited them different, blind?

A friend, I switched in new cables and did not tell him. Without any notice of
a change he proclaimed that a substantial improvement had come about in the
system. Could be coincidence since this was only one sample. It was truely
blind though. I had no contact with him between the time I considered
auditioning the new cables and the time he listened and made the claim of
improvement.

Or are you one of those who go into a panic when they have to match
X to A or B?

I don't do my blind comparisons as ABX . I do them as simple A B
comparisons. I
haven't compared cables in over a decade. Most of my comparisons are
between
different issues of recordings.

Good to know that you don't a priori believe you are incapable of
comparing things blind.

Not at all. I don't think I have voiced any opinion that blind testing per se
is a bad thing.