a great take on big$ cables

According to the article there’s been $15,000 challenges that haven’t been taken by these experts. The dumbing-down of audio. Read one unnamed magazine’s recent attempt (not Stereo Review)at describing why they won’t do double blind testing a few months ago– it’s hilarious, and total and complete nonsense.

There's plenty of these experts here, stand by for the typical obfuscation regarding why you can’t and don't want to do blind testing. Even better are the power cord (or chord as some insist on calling them) claims. Some cords are apparently "soundstage champs" - Okey doke, sure. Let’s see a statistically repetitive go at that one.

A fool and his money are easily parted.

OK Boa, I'll do it slow -

Serus - Long litany on why DBT is worthless, particularly when you can only remember sound criteria for about 5-10 seconds. If a $99 boombox is allegedly going to sound as good as a he-man rig as he assets, then cables / cords should be a infintessimally small change.

Evita's wife is a power and I/C critic - "Try making that argument fly with my wife. Claims to hear significant differences between cables and cords. What a fool, huh?"

OK, if you can only remember what something sounds like for 5-10 seconds, and can be fooled by a $99 boombox, then the way you can tell significant differences in cables and cords is??? So why not use DBT to prove to yourself at least that what you're hearing is a figment of your imagination.

According to serus, "Our sound memory is pathetically short, like 5-10 seconds", while Evita says "my wife claims to hear significant differences between cables and cords".
Thanks for proving my point guys.

Serus, I don't understand - not (just) trying to be argumentative.

The article points out how they had a box where they could go back-and-forth on cables to determine whether the differences were indeed perceptable. Much like when you go to a stereo shop and they give you a button to A/B speakers with. You don't need 5-10 seconds of audio memory as the changes are virtually real-time. And if you can or can't tell a statistically relevant change then??

And if you have to know what you're listening to to know how it sounds (boombox vs. Krell/Wilson), then all of the review is a fallacy, no?

I see tests in the Mags, where "this speaker had a better bottom end than that one, but the other imaged better etc" - and this is from NOTES!

Look, I've changed power cords and perceived great differences. Then I had a friend do the old DBT, and couldn't predictably tell which was which. I've had the same experience with I/C's, but here could use two sets of inputs on the preamp to be able to go back and forth, and again, suddenly the difference was, errr, let's say, much less perceptible.

That's why I get a good chuckle when someone gets all gooey about his latest audio ephiphany on one hand, but gets real defensive about DBT on the other. The old Emperor has no clothes situation to me.

Okay Mike, Thanks for the predictable response (see Whoaru99's post). Seems like you're bored - plenty of other threads to go to for such insightful comments.

For the record -
I believe there is a significant difference in the way cables sound.
It's the concept that someone can wax eloquent about a cable or a cord, then go all apoplectic about the why / how they couldn't be expected to identify this grand epiphany in a DBT is always a great chuckle to me.