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.?
Allow me to commend and support the observations made by the “user,” as quoted by hilde45. In medical school, I was trained that the way to evaluate the effectiveness or relative strength of a device, a drug, a method, etc. is by conducting a placebo controlled double blind study. In our area of interest, the data for such a study would be generated by panels of experienced listeners (audiophiles). I suspect that manufacturers of tweaks, like cables, will not conduct or publish such tests because of fear of the effects of the results on sales.
After all the attempted measuring is exhausted, Taste wine, Listen to cable changes. In the end its up to you what is good.
I think the opposite side would re-phrase your saying this way:
"After all the attempted measuring is exhausted, save your money safe in the knowledge that there are no cables worth the money you would have spent because there are no differences to be heard. Realize how good it is to know that there was nothing there and that it's better to hear differences where they really exist then to hear them where they do not exist."
The side that argues there are no differences in cables could go further and say that if you save money and time not chasing cable differences, you can spend that money and time on things that do matter, not least music, speakers, etc.
I suspect that most people who hear cable differences know this -- thus, they are conscious of the risk of opportunity cost they take when they chase cable sounds. Why do they take this risk? They'd argue that it's because they actually hear a difference. If they didn't, the rational thing to do would be to cut their losses, sell their cables and get some money back, and then move on to more fecund strategies for better sound.
@hilde45 So what is your opinion on the cable question? Do you you hear differences between cables and buy what you can afford or do you buy inexpensive cables because you don't hear any differences?
hilde45's map metaphor, and djones51's distinction between the "two systems"—"objective" measurements and "subjective" perceptions—calls to mind the Borges story "Of Exactitude in Science" (which, in its entirety, is just one paragraph long—itself a kind of pun). Borges imagines a culture that has developed cartography to such a point that their best map of a territory is the same size as the territory!
If a "better" map is one that indicates greater detail, then the "best" map would be one that left out no detail at all. But that would not be a map, it would simply be a pointless duplicate of the area mapped!
The relevance of this parable here is this, I think. Even if, in some hypothetical future, science were to develop measurements to the point that no subjective perception could not be rendered "objectively," this would still not touch what's at issue here (namely, the claim that if two things—power cords, interconnects, whatever—measure the same, then they must sound the same). If neuroscience is one day able to "map" the neural connections that objectively correspond to the experience of tasting a fine Cabernet Sauvignon, that neurological correlate will capture nothing at all of the experienceof tasting that fine wine. We do indeed have two different "systems" here; even if there's some one-to-one correspondence that can be mapped, they are not ontologically identical, they belong to different categories of being.
And yet...although I can't have a pain in your tooth, if we are to discuss our preferences—which are strictly incommunicable, as they are grounded in our private subjective experiences—then we need some kind of common language. That's what science, and "measurements," purport to provide. I can't share the experience of my neural firings with you directly. But I can point to the objectively measurable phenomena that gave rise to them. Sure, wine tasting is "subjective," and so is music appreciation. But there are wines that command huge sums of money, just as huge sums of money are spent on power cords and cables, and we want to believe there's some "objective" justification for this other than simple taste and preference.
We want to believe this, but it may not be so. The differences between audio systems may ultimately be no more "objectively" constituted than the difference in preferences for Mozart and Black Sabbath. The same may be true of wine. On our 25th anniversary, a friend prepared a seven-course Thomas Keller dinner, I opened a 1988 Chateau Mouton-Rothchild I'd been holding for more than a decade, and our daughter took her first sip of wine. A great one to start with, no? We all waited eagerly to hear her opinion. She swirled, sniffed, tasted, and declared: "It tastes like wine." Indeed!
One last thing. djones51 concludes by saying that "natural physical phenomena [are] oblivious to our rules, under the right conditions electricity will stop your heart whether we believe it or not." But that's so only to the extent that electricity is obeying our rules—in this case, the rules that govern how the heart operates and how electrical current interacts with that operation. You may want to say that these are genuinely "objective" facts, but to the extent that they are observed, named, measured—in short, experienced—they, too, are grounded in subjectivity, what philosophers call "mind." Kant argues that space and time themselves are features of mind—"forms of sensibility," to be specific—and do not exist except in consciousness. In the last analysis, "objectivity" is really only universal subjectivity: what is "true for everyone" is merely that which everyone will experience in relevantly similar ways.
Now, while we don't all experience Mozart (or Black Sabbath) in relevantly similar ways, we do all experience sound waves according to the laws of acoustics and auditory perception. This is why many audiophiles insist that all music will sound better on a better system (although it is also true, of course, that, for instance, bass-heavy music will sound best on a system with especially strong bass, etc.). The laws of physics don't make the judgments of taste which a musical preference presupposes. What the audio system does, more or less well (and this should be measurable) is to reproduce the aural phenomena, governed by the laws of physics, that the recording technology committed to the original source. Are these laws also "subjective"? Well, yes, at least in so far as they depend on consciousness. But they are "universally subjective" in a way that taste is not. Science gets better and better at identifying, describing and quantifying what is universally subjective, and so, in principle the audible differences between interconnects must be "measurable," even if not yet, if they exist at all. But those still hypothetical measurements no more guarantee an agreement in preference than would a comparative chemical analysis of Chateau Mouton-Rothchild and Chateau Lafite-Rothchild.
In the last analysis, Mozart, Black Sabbath, Chateau Mouton-Rothchild and the sound the wind makes in the chimney are "enjoyable" and "valuable" only if some consciousness values them. Value is not measurable. I prefer the Jupiter Symphony to John Cage's 4'33". But there is no "objective" justification for that preference. They're both objectively "aural phenomena," governed by exactly the same laws.
@sdl4 I hear definite differences in cables; of course, I don't have the tools to measure the competing cables I'm measuring, so I cannot presume to weigh in on the more general issue at stake.
I did for cables what I did for all my gear; after some research and consultation with audiophiles I trust, I went for cables that were not exorbitant but good enough to be sure that there could be some appreciable improvement. I started with lower cost Analysis Plus interconnects and speaker cable and after waiting patiently and haggling a bit online, got the Crystal series for my IC's and speaker wires. The sonic improvement is clear and I'm done upgrading there.
@hilde45 Thanks for the additional info. What do you like about how the AP Crystal series interconnects and speaker cables sound in your system?
I am considering a speaker cable upgrade and will probably borrow a few cables from the Lending Library at the Cable Company so that I can listen to several possibilities in my own system. I've never heard any Analysis Plus cables as yet, but I'm open to trying something new.
If neuroscience is one day able to "map" the neural connections that objectively correspond to the experience of tasting a fine Cabernet Sauvignon, that neurological correlate will capture nothing at all of the experience of tasting that fine wine. We do indeed have two different "systems" here; even if there's some one-to-one correspondence that can be mapped, they are not ontologically identical, they belong to different categories of being.
That's exactly right.
although I can't have a pain in your tooth, if we are to discuss our preferences—which are strictly incommunicable, as they are grounded in our private subjective experiences—then we need some kind of common language. That's what science, and "measurements," purport to provide.
Partially agree. Science and engineering measurements have very specific goals, much narrower than the goals of the taster or hearer. That's why we read film critics to understand or assess a movie and we don't particularly ask for a count of the number of frames, e.g. In other words, we communicate about sound using the language of the experience of sound, which is more akin to the language of wine experts and movie critics than to audio engineers. (Ironically, it's the audio engineers who have to figure out the "subjective" stuff so they can design for *it.* Those who put objectivity first get the cart ass-backwards.
In the last analysis, "objectivity" is really only universal subjectivity: what is "true for everyone" is merely that which everyone will experience in relevantly similar ways.
Right -- even what everyone "would" experience if the right conditions obtained.
while we don't all experience Mozart (or Black Sabbath) in relevantly similar ways, we do all experience sound waves according to the laws of acoustics and auditory perception. This is why many audiophiles insist that all music will sound better on a better system.
Agree again. And we *all* experience this (or mostly all) because we are really so much more similar than we like to admit. As Wittgenstein pointed out, the very idea of a private language is impossible. The same is true of a private audio language.
@sdl4 I liked the way they took a veil off upper mids and highs. Almost the effect of putting a thin cloth over the tweeters/mids and then removing it.
Found them all used. For the speaker, found a 14ft length then had AP cut it in half for me. Wound up with a $2200 cable for a grand total of $750 with shipping after all said and done.
Your contrast between a film critic's qualitative analysis and a scientific, quantitative account (e.g., of the number of frames in a film) is very clever, and telling here. "Qualitative" and "quantitative" roughly correspond to my distinction between "subjective" and "objective," respectively; they're different descriptions of the same phenomenon, and not reducible one to another (whichever way one might want to work the reduction). But only roughly. Again, if Kant is right, even quantitative analysis is ultimately "subjective," even if "universally" so, since arithmetic is nothing more than an analysis of the subjective "form of sensibility" that we experience as time.
Your reference to Wittgenstein picked up on my "I can't have a pain in your tooth" trope, which comes from him. FWIW, I have my problems with the private language argument, but that's certainly not grist for this particular mill.
Still, the relevance of serious philosophy to "audiophilia" and its various debates is pretty surprising. Or maybe not. Depends on your attitude to philosophy, I guess.
As @snilf states above, "Science gets better and better at identifying, describing and quantifying what is universally subjective, and so, in principle the audible differences between interconnects must be 'measurable,' even if not yet, if they exist at all. But those still hypothetical measurements no more guarantee an agreement in preference than would a comparative chemical analysis of Chateau Mouton-Rothchild and Chateau Lafite-Rothchild."
I agree that most of the differences we hear between cables should be measurable at some point in the future, but we are not there yet. At present, we can measure some things about a cable (e.g., frequency response, resistance, capacitance, etc.), but we don't usually have a clear handle on whether anything we measured actually accounts for differences we hear between specific cables. And even when we hear a difference, it's not a given that there will be agreement about which cable is preferred.
If you haven't actually read the AES publication I mentioned earlier in this thread, you might still want to take a look at it. It's a paper by Milind Kunchur from the U. of South Carolina entitled "Cable pathways between audio components can affect perceived sound quality." It was published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society in June. The study included double-blind listening trials comparing two interconnects: a balanced Straight-Wire Virtuoso and a single-ended Monster-Cable Interlink 400. After identifying significant methodological problems with the traditional "short-segment comparisons" of the ABX paradigm, the author developed and implemented an "extended multiple pass" paradigm that is actually a lot closer to what a person experiences when listening to music. (Please read the paper for more details.)
A group of 18 college students participated in the study, and these students completed a total of 59 double-blind listening trials. 43 of these 59 trials were judged correctly; the probability of this result being due to chance was p<.0005. When frequency response was measured, both cables varied by less than +/- 0.005 dB over the range of 16 Hz to 22 kHz. Resistive losses were too small to be considered important. However, the noise levels measured in the StraightWire cable were significantly lower than in the Monster cable.
The author concludes that two system configurations differing only by the interconnect pathway are audibly discernible, even by average listeners with no special experience in music or audio. The study did not complete an exhaustive exploration of all possible factors that might contribute to sonic differences between interconnects. However, electrical measurements did suggest that noise might be one factor affecting sonic performance. The author also noted, "The measurements also show that characteristics such as resistance and frequency response, that naive consumers may focus on, are irrelevant for distinguishing HEA ("High End Audio") interconnect cables."
@snilf Yes, we'll leave Wittgenstein aside for now (until someone accidentally yells 'slab.') I'm a pragmatist by training, so the Kantian account of subjectivism is helpful for me, but only to a point. (Another topic to run off the road, here.)
@sdl4 Most most most! appreciative of that link, which I've not had time to look at yet.
"After all the attempted measuring is exhausted, save your money safe in the knowledge that there are no cables worth the money you would have spent because there are no differences to be heard. Realize how good it is to know that there was nothing there and that it’s better to hear differences where they really exist then to hear them where they do not exist."
That’s one way to look at it and a great way to save money if that’s the objective. Hey, if someone can’t hear a difference, or not willing to try and compare first hand, nothing ventured nothing gained. The loaner program at TheCableCo is another way of trying before buying, and deciding.
@decooney We agree, above all, that we're willing to try things first before ruling them out. It's one thing to be a realist about how much one has to spend and say, "Can't go the cable route because it would compromise other more important things." It's another thing to suppose a difference cannot, in principle, be heard in order to save oneself the cheddar. As they say in poker games, "Put up or shut up."
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?
This all reminds me of Japan trying to corner the premier wine market back in the 80's. Well they were good at everything else, it is after all just more engineering, right? They have the soil, they have the climate, they are the same latitude as all the best wine growing regions, how hard could it be?
So they tested the crap out of the very best wines. Spectroscopy, gas chromatography, taste, smell, appearance, the works. All the very best wines, we are just gonna reverse engineer copy the crap out of em and beat em at their own game. Poured millions, hundreds of millions into it, and this is back in the 80's when a million was a big number not less than a rounding factor like today.
Ten years later instead of leading the market they were sucking wind. Twenty years later they still had nothing to show for it but a lot of good looking numbers. Here we are now coming up on 40 years, what we call two generations and look around, it is all California, France, Spain, same old.
They did the double blind science thing too. Turns out only people who actually have a taste for wine are fit to judge wine. Ultimately it does no good to insist on engineering and scientific testing. Either the people are buying it, or the people are not buying it.
Far as I know they never did figure out how to test and engineer wine. Change one letter. What are the odds it will be any different with wire?
In the absence of data, as I have described it previously, a lot of verbiage is generated. sdl4 has posted real, meaningful, data, above, supporting the superiority of Straight Wire Virtuoso Cable, at least over Monster Cable. Now we’re getting somewhere!
Actually all sdl4 posted was spurious data from someone trying to do research outside their area of expertise. This researcher has been debunked before and had a paper withdrawn when venturing into audiophile mythology. The only thing shown in the paper mentioned is there was a difference heard between sine waves using old equipment and unspecified methodology.
Apparently, djones51 prefers to post about his own biased opinions rather than to consider the implications of published peer-reviewed research that calls those opinions into question.
The paper is misleading and a confused mess. For instance it was commented upon already, the post before mine, of the superiority of straight wire over monster. The paper does no such thing it uses 2 different cables through 2 different pathways which were never tested for distortion and noise and concluded the pathways sound different. The subjects were only given 2 choices there should have been a third choice , neither. Tests like this lead the respondents, the methodology is flawed.
I don't agree that this paper is a "confused mess," but it does have both strengths and limitations that must be considered in interpreting the results. I agree that the paper doesn't show that Straight Wire cables are consistently better than Monster cables, but this was not the goal of the study. What it does show is that a moderately expensive balanced cable from Straight Wire sounds different than a less expensive single-ended cable from Monster, when each cable is connected using its intended pathway (i.e., either balanced XLR or single-ended RCA). Because methodological limitations in prior listening studies have made it difficult to identify reliable cable differences, the cables were chosen to be as different as possible to maximize the likelihood of finding a difference during double-blind listening trials. This approach made it impossible to tease out the specific contributions of the cable topology (XLR vs. RCA) from the effects of the cable geometry, conductors, dielectrics, etc. Studies that are designed to test those specific factors should be carried out in the future.
It appears that you believe that the 2-choice stimulus-matching paradigm for the listening trials is too simple and should have employed a third choice as well. However, as the author discusses in the paper, the use of a rapidly changing ABX paradigm (or some other more complex format) is not ideal for listening trials involving musical passages. Using pilot testing with a small group of subjects, he identified problems with rapid stimulus presentations and with more demanding cognitive loads. Keeping the decisions simple and anchored to descriptors was used to maintain the subject's attention and prevent deterioration of performance due to fatigue. Most people who have participated in ABX listening trials know how frustrating it can be to have to juggle the data that go into same-different decisions and then to make rapid sonic judgments, especially when they worry that someone is trying to confuse or fool them by manipulating the way the stimuli are presented. These problems can often lead to reduced attention and performance later in a trial, even when the stimuli are simpler than complex musical passages.
In pharmaceutical clinical trials, the placebo effect is A Thing, people get better because they think they are not in the control group, and they number in the thousands. That’s why you have peer reviewed clinical trials. Just sayin’.
It's important to clarify that the use of a "placebo" in drug trials is different than controlling for the expectations of participants when comparing differences between two audio cables. In both cases, the use of a double-blind design can be used to control for expectation bias, but neither cable should be considered a placebo because both cables actually deliver an audio signal.
In pharmaceutical clinical trials, the placebo effect is A Thing, people get better because they think they are not in the control group ...
Not exactly. Placebos won’t cure cancer.
Those that prattle most consistently about placebo affect insist they have science on their side. Here's a gem from @mijostyn, who claims he's done the research:
It is safe to assume the placebo effect as 50%. If I give 100 people
with headaches a sugar pill 50 will tell you it made them better. This
is why we always run controls.
He runs controls! You'd think he'd be anxious to share his research - after all, he claims to be a medical doctor. But for some reason, the "proof" always goes "poof." Why is that?
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