"Sander deWaal" wrote in message
...
"Robert Morein" said:

I heard a 2' length of unshielded interconnect that made an incredible
difference in the sound versus ordinary coax. This actually works against
my
bias that such things should not make a difference, yet it it me plain as
day. Why should I deny the reality of the experience. Why shoudn't this
instigate further investigation, rather than a repetition of the ABX
litany?


Well, I never thought I'd say this, but this seems an excellent
candidate for some kind of (double) blind testing.
If you're really keen on further investigation, that could be a start.

I mean it in a more general sense, that ABX itself is worthy of
investigation. Ludovic has compiled a substantial list of comparisons, some
of which involve ancient, cheap, and lousy amplifiers against decent ones;
ABX failed to allow the listeners to distinguish what should have been
easily distinguishable.

There is a possibility that a DBT (or even ABX) test of said cables
will yeild no positive results.

Perhaps. But I don't mean to imply anything remarkable about cables either.
It could be that the preamp had an unusually high output impedance. OTOH, it
could be that Macolm Hawksford is right after all. The distinguished cables
are an unshielded twisted pair. My point is, it is an observation of an
audiophile, that like so many others, is contradicted by the exponents of
ABX.

It then gets interesting, because what other factors are responsible
for you to hear a difference?

Preamp output impedance?
Alleged properties of cables that have not received general acceptance?

I followed the same approach in testing certain components for my
amplifiers, be it that they were single blind tests.

Remember, I'm a hobbyist, not a professional designer of amps (thank
God!).

BTW why *unshielded* interconnect cables? That seems silly to me.

Well, the cable "tweakos" and "freakos" would probably be attracted to the
visible innovation in construction, as opposed to what worthy things can be
done under a PVC jacket. The other argument would be, there's less
capacitance to drive without the braid. That is the closest I can come to
explaining the sound, which sounded markedly uptilted compared to the
conventional coax cables.