Cables that measure the same but (seem?) to sound different


I have been having an extended dialogue with a certain objectivist who continues to insist to me that if two wires measure the same, in a stable acoustic environment, they must sound the same.

In response, I have told him that while I am not an engineer or in audio, I have heard differences in wires while keeping the acoustic environment static. I have told him that Robert Harley, podcasters, YouTuber's such as Tarun, Duncan Hunter and Darren Myers, Hans Beekhuyzen, Paul McGowan have all testified to extensive listening experiments where differences were palpable. My interlocutor has said that either it is the placebo effect, they're shilling for gear or clicks, or they're just deluded.

I've also pointed out that to understand listening experience, we need more than a few measurement; we also need to understand the physiology and psychological of perceptual experience, as well as the interpretation involved. Until those elements are well understood, we cannot even know what, exactly, to measure for. I've also pointed out that for this many people to be shills or delusionaries is a remote chance at best.

QUESTION: Who would you name as among the most learned people in audio, psychoacoustics, engineering, and psychology who argue for the real differences made by interconnects, etc.?
hilde45

Showing 2 responses by denverfred

Maybe best to look outside the usual fields of study on this question. While very valuable research is being done by some of the righteous electricians--work essential to the design and engineering process--efforts to quantify aesthetics fail repeatedly to explain what we hear. It often seems as though we Dionysians are considered insane or at least delusional by Apollonian standards. Here’s a good idea starter:

"When cognitive scientists try to understand why people develop delusions, they . . . have focused on this notion of epistemic irrationality, underlining that delusions arise from faulty reasoning processes."—Anna Greenburgh is a PhD student at University College London. Her research investigates social cognition in psychosis and across the paranoia spectrum. PSYCHE 19 AUGUST 2020
So who has the faulty reasoning process? The listener, in the moment? Or the scientist, totally isolated from the musical moment?

Emotions being so fleeting and ethereal, their accurate measurement seems unlikely in my lifetime. We attempt the impossible all the time: Greeting cards, gifts, law suits, acting graciously toward others. Meanwhile, I try to enumerate things with 1 to 10 on the doctor’s pain chart. . . . 1 to 5 stars on Amazon. . . counting sniffles at sad movies. It should be safe to suggest that audiophiles who are NOT experiencing emotional moments in their music should try a cable change or a hobby change. If you can’t hear a difference, where’s the hobby?