"Wylie Williams" wrote in message
et
I recall in olden days Consumer Reports tested speakers with a
method that compared speakers under test with their reference(AR3a).
It was an elaborate system that they considered scientific, to see
how closely other speakers could mimic the sound of the AR, but I
wondered how it was able to distinguish a speaker with better
resolution than the AR3a. This if prefatory to a conversation with an
audiophile friend today. I mentioned that I was not quite pleased
with my system's sound. He asked "Haven't you listened to those Tara
Labs cables the rep loaned you? ( I have some expensive ones on loan,
and some much cheaper ones I own and use) I replied that I had but
hadn't heard enough difference to be sure it was real. Certainly no
significant improvement to my ears. His reply was that the problem is
probably that my speakers are too low on the food chain to discern
the difference, and offered to loan me his when he goes out of town
soon. He says I'll hear the difference then. This raises an
interesting point about all those listening tests we hear about.
Maybe the speakers in the tests have too little resolution to allow
differences to be heard. Have any of the subjectivist RAHE members
(surely some exist) had the experience of discovering that a some
point getting better speakers started making a difference in being
able to hear dfferences in the sound of speaker cables?

Once upon a time I asked a speaker cable audible differences proponent
something like: "What is the cheapest speaker that can be used to hear
differences between cables". He said "NHT 2.5i". So, I ran right out and
bought a set of NHT 2.5i speakers (pretty good speakers by the way).
Needless to say, I still couldn't hear differences between different brands
of speaker cable that had similar DC resistance.

Guess I should have bought the 3.3s, instead!

;-)