[Oliver Costich]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:58:10 GMT, Andy C wrote:

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:52:40 -0800 (PST), John Atkinson wrote:

Okay, I was reading the article and noticed some strange things. The
article says the following:

"I set up a room with two sound systems, identical except for one
component. Everything except the speakers was hidden behind screens."

So he is saying that there were actually two separate systems - two source
components, two amplifiers, etc. But were there two different sets of
speakers too? One would hope not! Using a single set of speakers, there
would need to be a switching arrangement to switch the speakers between the
outputs of the two different amplifiers through the two different speaker
cables. But if there were a properly designed switching network, there
would be no need for two different systems at all. There could just be a
transfer switch using the highest quality relays to switch between the two
speaker cables. That is, a two-throw at the amplifier end and a two-throw
at the speaker end of each speaker cable. This would hold everything else
constant. If there were really two different sets of speakers, then the
experiment was so poorly designed it isn't even worth discussing. Just the
speaker position difference alone would likely cause differences in the
sound that would be measureably far greater than any cable could cause.

Then it also says:

"Using two identical CD players, I tested a $2,000, eight-foot pair of
Sigma Retro Gold cables from Monster Cable, which are as thick as your
thumb, against 14-gauge, hardware-store speaker cable."

Two identical CD players and what else? This guy is being very vague. I
guess he is just addressing the typical WSJ reader who isn't familiar with
or does not care about this stuff. There just isn't enough info provided
to evaluate whether the test setup is valid or not.


All good points. This particualr test was badly enough designed to be
flawed from the start, never mind what the data actually conclude.