A challenge to the "measurement" camp


I’ve watched some of his video and I actually agree on some of what he said,
but he seems too confident on his insistence on measurement. For those
who expound on the merits of blind test and measurement, why not turn
the table upside down?

Why not do a blind test of measurement? That is I will supply all the measurement
you want, can you tell me which is a better product?

For example, if I have a set of cable, and a set of measurement for each
individual cable, can you tell me which is the best cable based on measurement
alone? I will supply all the measurement you want.
After all, that is what you’re after right? Objective result and not subjective
listening test.

Fast forward to 8:15 mark where he keeps ranting about listening test
without measurement.  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=katmUM-Xelw

By the way, is he getting paid by Belden?  Because he keeps talking about it
and how well it measures.  I've had some BlueJean cables and they can easily
bettered by some decent cables.  
andy2

Showing 50 responses by andy2

I notice a lot of anti-cable youtube/websites tend to gravitate toward Belden cables.  Are they all being paid by Belden?
You give some measurements and I decide which is best? Go ahead give me some measurements on two different cables and I'll pick the best.

OK, which measurement parameters are you inquiring?  
I don't get the "bashing the synergy" from him.  Surely he listened to tubes before.  For example, most people use tube pre-amp, and solid state amp to take the advantage of synergy between them.

Or if for example you have a upfront speaker, then you can use tubes to mellow out the sound a bit.  It has nothing to do with tone control.

Every piece of equipment has a certain sound signature regardless of price range.  The end user can mix and match to get what he wants.
Just a 20hz to 20khz sweep from your speakers. Use two different speaker cables in the same system and room. I can tell from that which gives the flattest response which will be the best cable.
Things are not as simple as you think.  No cable will be "flat".  Any cable will have dip and bump at different frequencies.  Not only that, there is phase shift too.  
The inductance and capacitance of speaker cables will be very consistent over frequency
Why don't you just for once in a life time enlighten us how you would interpret these plots?  The reality is you have no clue.




This might be the first cable thread that ends up being about gravity lols.  So we go from talking about something nobody knows into something that nobody really knows.
^^^ How do you decide?  Each cable will dip and bump at different freq.  My point is you can't tell by just looking at the frequency response.  And as I said, there is phase shift too.  
If you can't do it just say so. I know how to read the graph. I don't need arguments, I don't need you to tell me what I'll be looking for I know what to look for.
It's simple to get the frequency response plot.  Maybe you can enlighten us with how you interpret graph?  How do you decide which dip and bump at different freq. will affect the sound?  The short answer is you can't.  It's more complicated than that.  


Uh, I hope the inductance vs frequency is ruler flat

You realize that even the inductance vs. freq. of an actual inductor is not flat, don't you?  Now being a cable with distributive characteristic, I am not sure how it will be flat.  Same for capacitance and resistance.  They won't be flat.

I guess unless you live in a paradise, none of these will be flat.  Again, if you can enlighten us with how you will interpret these variable and determine which is the better cable.  


^^^Well we've made some progress.  Initially it's just the freq. plot, now you realize it's more than that so you're asking for Inductance, AC resistance and capacitance.  You also probably realize by now these are not flat either.

But I can make it simple for you.  Just educate us how you will interpret all the bumps and dips of inductance,cap, res plots.  How do you determine which is more importance when comparing diff. cables?
I don't think you know what you're talking about
Look like you are talking about yourself.  But anyway, you just got a good education from me.  Now you understand your own flaw.  It's more complicated than you can handle and I taught you a good lesson.  

Tell us how will interpret the plots.  Otherwise, we will be laughing at your stupidity.  



You will find that listening is everything, nothing else matters.
Fixed.  


Lols about flat inductance and flat resistance. Watch this vid at 1:55 mark.

It’s all over the place after 10KHz.  This vid from a guy who don't believe in cable lols.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6evV01Z-mWY
 You don’t understand what these plots illustrate nor the concept of bulk LRC
Nice deflection from your own flaw and contradiction.  So what is it?  Are these plots flat or not? 

Again, enlighten us how you interpret the plots.  You don't think you have a clue what you're talking about other than copy the wikipage.  
I think you put yourself in a bind. (To the djones or robert or atavid ...)

Here  these two positions you have to take:

1. Plots are flat.
If the plots are flat, then by definition you can’t tell the difference among the cables because they are all flat. Then your conclusion has to be all cables sound the same because they all measure the same - FLAT.
But of course cables don’t sound the same so this a flaw position.

2. Plots are not flat:
Then you why don’t you enlighten us how you would interpret these plots - with all the dips and bumps at different frequencies. Here is the second FLAW because nobody knows how, and certainly you don’t know either.

That’s the point but some people are too thick in the head to understand.
The impedance frequency plot as requested by djones51, will reveal the critical composite of this data ...
I am pretty sure he has no clue lols.  This is too funny.  Like the three stooges.  

^^^ The reason I am sure he has no clue is nobody on this earth has any clue how to lols.  It is so obvious.  Those three stooges lols.
Until now, you have offered only insults and claims that djones51 is clueless.
That is because after getting a good education from me, he still hasn't posted anything useful. He keeps asking for data but has no clue how to use them.   So by definition, that is clueless.

Again that's what it takes to deal with these kinds of situation.

And if you keep supporting him, then eventually you're no different than him.    






but you could give djones51 whatever it is that she/he is asking for
The finger :-)

Sorry but I couldn't resist. 


^^^Well the ship has sailed.  

But sometimes, that's what it takes to deal with certain username.  Decency won't work on them.
^^^You may not be arrogant but still you could be clueless.  Did you read his post?  Has he posted anything useful even especially I gave him a good lesson?  The answer is NO.  

I am still waiting to see how he can look at the data only and determine which is the better cable?  The dude just blowing hot air but I don't think knows what he talking about.
^^^lols. Now Glupson, you’re officially clueless and useless since you can't read 

Glupson, you’re part of the three stooges.
^^^lols let's see your skills or its just bs.  Post your methods here or it's just bs.  I'll let you in a secret - I already know.  
If there is a way to help you, just let us know,
Yes, by not posting useless stuffs lols.
If there is a difference in distortion and the only thing changed is a cable then the cable contributed to the distortion.

As you said, a cable is basically an R/L/C circuit (your words not mine)?  Passive R/L/C circuit do not create distortion - that's electrical 101.  If you going to say the distortion is created by the cable, then you have to explain why.  

The cable that shows the lowest distortion on Tone input
So you say cable can create "distortion"?  According to you, cable is basically R/C/L.  How can passive R/C/L circuit create distortion?  Seems like you contradick yourself lols.  I know the answer but I want to see if you do lols.


Is there something I’m missing
Actual engineering?  Is that good enough English for you?  Only two words that are worth more than all you know lols.

In the first place I never said USB cables create noise. RF noise can leach in through connectors.
Actually you could be/might be/possibly be right about cable creating distortion. The trick is trying to explain it why? What is it in the cable that might create distortion? If cables does create distortion, then you said about cable is no more than just R/L/C circuit is wrong. So that is your contradiction.  Either you're right about distortion and wrong about R/L/C - you can't have both.

I was just testing you to see if you know but you so quickly changed your mind which to show that you do not know.


Skin effect increases the resistance of a typical speaker by about 0.o1 Ohms at 20 kHz, something that can be calculated from any E&M textbook used in master's degree level courses. In series with speakers with DC resistance of 4 Ohms the roll-off is less than 0.01 db at 20 kHz. Cable designers should know this and if they do, they can't be bothered to admit litz construction of individual strands "solves" a problem that does not exist.
On the other hands, you can't disprove that either.  That is you can't disprove that our hearing can detect the difference due to skin affect.  


^!^ Actually it's already been done in the form of Active DSP speakers, but it's a step backward in term of sound quality.  So you can't have both.
(You would still need two power cords - one for left and one for right speaker).
A lot of studios record everything in digital and use that as their master tape (or disc) because it's easy for mixing in digital.  But that makes sense because they can afford top notched ADC (so it's not like some cheap ADC found in the garden variety receivers from Best Buy).  Then they transfer that to vinyl using high quality DAC.  So on paper, it's hard to argue how vinyl is superior since they all have to go through a DAC stage.  Either it's the studio DAC or your own DAC at home.

Not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that is measured matters.
I am sure there are people in this thread will try to argue with this.  I mean there's guy on another thread thinks he can tell which is a better cable by just looking at some basic measurements.  

Can someone interpret what the pigs (3) are saying?  I've never known what pig wrestling is like but this is close.:-)
A good example is measuring amplifier THD. Amps with feedback tend to measure better vs. amps with no overall feedback, but we all know which ones sound better.

What happens is amps with feedback tend to have higher order distortion and our ears are sensitive to it.  On the other hands, amps with no feedback may have higher overall distortion but the distortions are of lower order.


^It's interesting that I made a post with regards to feedback amp vs. no feedback amp with information comes from PassLabs and they attacked that too.

I think they just smell some blood and go after it without knowing what it is first.  
For those interested, here's the article from PassLabs talking about feedback vs no feedback.  Forward to Figure 11.  It shows feedback reduces the overall distortion but has more higher order distortion which the ears are sensitive to.  This is another example in which something measures well but it creates higher order affect which can be difficult to quantify and not always obvious in real life.  

http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_dist_fdbk.pdf
Negative feedback can reduce the total quantity of distortion, but it adds new components on its own, and tempts the designer to use more cascaded gain stages in search of better numbers, accompanied by greater feedback frequency stability issues.
The resulting complexity creates distortion which is unlike the simple harmonics associated with musical instruments, and we see that these complex waves can gather to create the occasional tsunami of distortion, peaking at values far above those imagined by the distortion specifications.

A transformer is not an "isolator".  There is something called "mutual inductance".  Electrical 101.  If you open the secondary coil, the primary coil could go high impedance.

Atadavid, you don't know electrical engineering.  Basically transformer like that should be understood by first year student.
 not to isolation of the high frequencies from intentional power line filtering, leakage inductance, and frequency dependent hysteresis of the core, etc.

It's called filtering, not isolation.  Please be precise.  Again you're using layman term.  There is a big difference between isolation and filtering.

The transformer may filter out some high frequency component, but DEFINITELY not isolating. 

There are a lot of power supply you don't know and you're just speaking out of your a$$. 
If the person buys (spends money) on a power regenerator and then needs to buy a new power cord for it to sound better,
On paper, but there is no such thing as 100% isolation.  They are all connected in there.  Also there is no such thing as "power signal" and "music signal".  They are all the same since you modulate the power to get musical signal, so in that respect, the musical signal comes straight from the power signal.  A quick look of the power amplifier schematic will show this.

It's like noise insulator.  Regardless how much you put in, there will be some noise that leaked through.  


Atadavid, do this simple experiment.

Why don’t you do build a transformer and try to capture energy from the AC power line in your backyard. You will get arrested because you will cause fluctuation in power on the main line. What you do in the secondary line will affect the main line. They will find out you are stealing the power.

There is no isolation. You just copy and paste from somewhere without understanding.

May want to clue in at some point that one of us knows what they are doing
Did you get called out for not knowing the meaning of "rectification"?  But it seems like you do now finally.



There is a reason why it's called "power conditioner" and not "power isolation".  If one is capable of reading schematic circuit, then one would understand there is no such thing as "isolation".

But I don't expect Atadavid to understand that.  
OK, where did you "copy and paste" from?  You don't even understand what you're posting.  I am telling you david there is no such thing as "isolation".  You are just using layman language for electrical engineering that is not even accurate.  
As for power conditioner, just because you have one, does not mean the power cable does not matter.

Imagine you have a power conditioner, but your power cable is slim and tiny, it will definitely affect the performance of the power conditioner.  Therefore, you need some decent power cable.