DO CABLES REALLY MATTER?

Dlcockrum. Lol. You are so right. Round and around wit the Marvin the martian space language 

I gotta step in here (do I dare??).  It just occurred to me that Mapleshade swears by thin wire with minimal  insulation.  They are supposed to know a lot about why this is so good for the sound.  Walker audio also uses skinny wires with little or no covering for their turntable.  Then there are ribbon style cables, with the majority being round thick conductors with lots of insulation.  And it's quite true that in a recording studio reliable sturdy wire with durable connectors are used 'cause they get stepped on and wound up and tangled and thrown into a corner to gather dust until the next time they're needed.  My conclusion to all of this is- if you have usable cable that's obviously well made, it should be a long time before you need to spend significant money on something "better" unless you really can get to audition it first. Some of us (I include myself who owns Transparent cables) take it on faith that I will obtain better performance from audiophile-grade wire, and I do NOT claim that I have gotten my money's worth from doing this. But I do get, after 30 years of upgrading speakers and things like that, somewhat better results than if I still used my Radio Shack "professional-grade" wires.  But I profess that it's a hobby, I enjoy it like the village idiot that I am, and I like good stuff like Beethoven and Brubeck and Steely Dan. Could I go back tomorrow (if I had to) and listen to my Dad's Blaupunkt "hi-fi" radio?  -Absolutely. Of course, back then they had concerts on FM stations and I loved listening to them. Who's to say if I had less fun then than I do now if I can't?

french_fries,

Thanks for the post full of sanity. The road so far has been a little different.

Per aspera ad astra.

It is hard to beat Blaupunkt car radio. Maybe Becker Mexico, but even that is a big "maybe".

It all depends on where you get off and what you’re trying to accomplish. My debutante ball was with Mapleshade at CES way back when. The (Ron Bowman, Pierre’s partner) interconnects are 54 ga or whatever, thinner than a human hair, which produce either almost no skin effect or all skin effect, I forget which. The Mapleshade cables sound really spectacular, by the way. I had brought along my Nimbus sub Hertz iso platform to isolate the Nakamichi Dragon CD System that included a unique feature: when a CD is inserted into the CD player a vacuum is produced around the CD transport for a stage of isolation. All cables and power cords (also ultra thin) were suspended from eye hooks on the ceiling with thread. The whole wild and crazy look of the Mapleshade/Machina Dynamica/Gallo room prompted someone  was it Shannon Dickson?  at Stereophile magazine to write that it look like something out of Plan 9 from Outer Space.

E pluribus unum.

geoff kait
machina dynamica

Everyone should buy more expensive cables, especially if they can't hear the difference between what they already have. You have to consider directionality, skin effect, interference by gamma, cosmic and Wi-Fi signals plus secret government wavelengths.

Then there's 2G, 3G, and 4G. Of course the game's up when 5G comes but in the meantime I advise everyone to send every last cent they have on the most expensive cables they can find. And every time a more expensive cable comes along you must buy that too.

You just can't take any chances these days. The fact that some say a straightened coat hanger sounds just as good as $1000 per metre cable just shows how unrefined their palette must be. No, I don't need any figures on resistance, induction or capacitance. I prefer to trust my ears. I had them recently checked only 20 years ago.

Now pass me another glass of Screaming Eagle Cabernet 1992. At $500k a bottle it's got to be worth every cent.

In a modern recording, I’m wondering how much of the signal passed from the mic to the engineer over whatever cables at the studio is left by the time it passes through the computer they’re processing/mixing on. I assume almost all of the sound staging for most of our recordings is entirely fake. I’d bet every instrument is processed and equalized and run through DSP filters. I’d say it’s much more likely that we’re buying cables to better hear the recording, and that recording is loosely connected to the signal at the mic.

I’m off to UPS now to pick up my Cable Company library order. I’m really interested in knowing what my first impressions are, hypnosis or not. I do agree with the statement above that if I have to really strain to hear a difference, then it’s not worth my money to upgrade.

Whoa! What? Hey, that’s a lot of assumptions. Why assume anything?

How far would you go? 

https://youtu.be/XJJy6VJvSCk

To paraphrase an old Sam Kinison line:
If you see me doing that, just shoot me.

elizabeth
I always put my umptions in there Geoff. That is the best place to keep unptions fresh!

>>>>Please! There might be children reading this.

nonoise
To paraphrase an old Sam Kinison line:
If you see me doing that, just shoot me.

>>>Didn’t he wind up shooting himself? Whatever.

My first impression isn't what I expected at all.  The Kimber Hero XLR cables sound really bright to me compared to my AQ Mackenzie XLRs.  The Kimber ~$1200 speaker cables are going to require more listening.  First impression is that my AQ Rocket 33 Bi-wires are pretty good and I will likely stick with them. 

Which brings me to .. I am going to buy a USB cable because even though I've only listened to one of them so far, I'm 99% sure I will be able to differentiate between my printer cable and the better USB cable blind. My current belief is that the difference wasn't subtle which is not what I expected.

So, cables matter.  Just not precisely how I expected.  So far.  A lot more listening and an assistant next week to help me blind compare and to see if she can hear differences.

Yes and no. Cables matter and do make a huge difference to people that have the ability to hear the difference a good cable can do in their system.
On the other side those that say no must not have the hearing ability to actually hear differences between cheap and higher end cables.

^^^^^  and...there we go again....

Another in-depth analysis of the issue.

ron1319,

I am going to buy a USB cable because even though I’ve only listened to one of them so far, I’m 99% sure I will be able to differentiate between my printer cable and the better USB cable blind. My current belief is that the difference wasn’t subtle which is not what I expected.

Have you ever considered, just for the heck of it, having someone help you with a quick blind test of your cables. If you are getting new USB cables, that should be a pretty easy swap.

In my case my source equipment is in a different room from my speakers, so that makes it easier to set up a test where I can’t see/hear what’s going on during the swapping.


Though even if you have your source in the same room as the speakers, I"m sure you could do a blind test with someone helping so you don’t know which cable they swapped in. It may not pass peer review...but even informal blind tests at home can still be somewhat surprising and mind-opening :-)

Prof. No more babble? 

You can always tell a pseudo skeptic on a crusade because he keeps telling you blind tests will be surprising, or prove there’s no difference between cables, or prove a super expensive cable is just as good as Radio Shack cable or Monster Cable. Another clue is they never do blind tests themselves. Blind tests are as vulnerable to test errors as any other kind of test. All pseudo skeptic arguments eventually lead to Blind Tests, the pinnacle of pseudo skeptic logic. 🙄

Geoffkait,

blind tests are how science is done. i worked in pharma marketing for 25 years. Your meds don’t make it to market without blind testing with control groups. 

The rest is superstition, demagoguery, snake oil ...

Good for you! What works in pharma stays in pharma. Don’t contaminate audio with your junk science. I like your hat.

calvinj,
I see you aren't done baiting people.  What a sweetheart.

Though you started a thread with a poor attitude and continued it, fortunately some have entered with an interest in honest conversation.

unreceivedogma,

Yes blind testing is used all over the place, including in physics.

It’s even used by orchestras in auditioning players, to remove things like gender bias:

https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2013/oct/14/blind-auditions-orchestras-gender-bias

But of course, blind testing and science just can’t apply to the mysterious realm of high end audio. It’s Just So Different you see! People can make all the inferences they want in high end audio and magically avoid bias. (Even though, of course, bias can be shown...but don’t let facts get in our way...)

prof - sorry to say you still don’t get it. Nobody is saying there’s no such thing as bias or other psychological effects. What I’m saying it’s not easy to prove or disprove anything in audio. Nobody promised you a rose garden. What you still don’t get is that negative results of a blind test don’t mean anything. All I can do is keep repeating my mantra until it seeps through that thick membrane surrounding your brain. All this other pharma blind testing and blind tests used for physics is stuff you made up or irrelevant.

What lengths will determined pseudo skeptics go to try to prove that cables don’t matter or that directionality doesn’t matter or that fuses don’t matter? Well, we’re seeing what lengths they’re go, right here, ladies and germs. You can take all the Crusader Rabbits and line them up and they won’t prove anything. 🐇 🐇 🐇 🐇 🐇

Let me put it a different way. If YOU performed a blind test yourself and reported negative results I would throw your results in the circular file. Capish? 😛.

Why is it that pseudo skeptics and die hard naysayers never perform testing themselves? Just a lotta, “Betcha can’t pass a blind test.” What are they afraid of? 😳

For starters musical instruments are not like audio although I can certainly understand why someone might say so. Second, I don’t trust other people’s hearing. So there’s that. Also, blind testing is actually not part of the scientific method. So, there’s that, too. That’s a lot of rubbish that pseudo skeptics want us to believe.

It’s not that someone else’s blind tests are irrelevant to me. It’s not that at all. You misquoted me. What I’m saying is ANY blind test taken by itself has no meaning and cannot be generalized to make some grand sweeping statement. So, a single test can have no meaning for the person doing the test, too, not only me, Especially if the results of that test are negative. Now, if there are say ten blind tests by different people in ten different systems then I might look at the data. Raise your hands if you still don’t understand.

@djones51 some will always argue that blind tests are useless. If this is so, then sighted ones must be ten times more useless because vision adds nothing to the objective evaluation of sound as anyone working in sound production will readily testify. In fact vision can be a good way to mask sonic defects.

The fact is blind listening tests are most feared by the people with something to sell. All of a sudden when hugely expensive cables, amps, CD players are put in against their budget counterparts in an objectively fair setting healthy profit margins evaporate into the ether.

Consider that over the decades despite much superstitious nonsense written about Ouija boards, the fact remains that when the users were blindfolded nothing but gibberish was ever produced.

If you really want the sonic truth then close your eyes. No one listens like the blind.

No baiting here. You can’t hear well so how can we talk. Lol.  Any way different cables. Different sounds. Find the ones you like. 

cd318
@djones51 some will always argue that blind tests are useless. If this is so, then sighted ones must be ten times more useless because vision adds nothing to the objective evaluation of sound as anyone working in sound production will readily testify. In fact vision can be a good way to mask sonic defects.

The fact is blind listening tests are most feared by the people with something to sell. All of a sudden when hugely expensive cables, amps, CD players are put in against their budget counterparts in an objectively fair setting healthy profit margins evaporate into the ether.

Consider that over the decades despite much superstitious nonsense written about Ouija boards, the fact remains that when the users were blindfolded nothing but gibberish was ever produced.

If you really want the sonic truth then close your eyes. No one listens like the blind.

>>>>I really mean this, the best thing to do with that post is file under Whatever. 

elizabeth,

A few things....(and I realize this will likely go longer than you may want to read, but others may be interested in this response):

1. The first thing is to note how you seem to be speaking about cable differences. If, as your post implies, the differences between cables can disappear so readily when you are simply asked to listen under blind conditions, that in of itself suggests the differences are not of a scope commonly claimed for cables. We constantly hear about BIG OBVIOUS differences, often describing obvious tightening, or deepening of bass (or the reverse), obviously larger soundstages, extending/refining high frequencies, lusher or tighter midrange, less grain, more dynamic, and on and on.

As I wrote before: these type of differences are akin to what one may hear from a totally re-mastered album.


And yet the idea floated here is that those OBVIOUS differences just won’t be heard when you don’t know which cable you are listening to.

I work in post sound production manipulating sound all day long, in large and often very subtle ways (sometimes I’m literally tweaking, or matching the sound of the "air" in a room). I can guarantee you that if I took a sound, made a copy and very slightly tweaked it, say increasing volume by 3dB or tweaking it via EQ to slightly brighten it, or add the teeniest touch of reverb, I could blindfold you and you would be able to tell the difference during fast switching back and forth. (Of the time of say, allowed by an ABX box).

I’m sure this would not "stress you out" to where you could not longer hear such differences, especially because they are real, and discernible to most listeners. The same would go for comparing an album that was re-mastered to sound different from the original, in the way that many cable-lovers claim occurs with cables.

It CAN get tiring trying to discern audible differences to the degree they are very subtle. The less subtle, the less work you have to do, the more subtle, the more you have to concentrate to find any difference. But again, note that audiophiles typically swap in a new pair of cables and, with no "strain of concentration" at all, confidently declare they heard an obvious difference. For the most part, these types of differences should not be a "strain" to hear, even in blind testing.

2. It’s a common misunderstanding of blind tests, particularly the ABX type used for amps, cables etc, that it has to be done under a condition that causes "stress." Ideally one uses fast switching (due to problematic audible memory for subtle differences - the longer it takes between switching, the less able we are to keep a very subtle sound in memory). But fast switching does not automatically entail listening to fast snippets of sound - rather it simply means being able to switch quickly from one sound to the other when you DO want to compare them. A blind test can be as leisurely as you want...over months if you want, switching whenever you feel as relaxed as you please.


Tom Nousaine, a well known proponent of blind/ABX testing did quite a few extended bind tests with audiophiles (for instance a five week long blind test between two amplifiers Andromeda vs HCA800II).


3. Blind tests don’t mean actual audible differences necessarily go away.Even in my case, I successfully identified differences between an older CD player, newer CD player and a DAC (either with 100 percent, or almost 100 percent accuracy, as I remember).

4. What blind tests can test: Despite the ever present noise level on threads like these - that is geofkait’s muddying of the water ;-) - one just has to be clear on what we want to test.

For instance, if an INDIVIDUAL claims to be able to hear a difference between his new cable and his previous cable, THAT can be tested via DBT. If the individual doesn’t show a statistically suggestive result for identifying between the two cables, strictly speaking you can conclude he failed to demonstrate his own ability to discern between the cables. If the results are strong enough, you can provisionally conclude "sorry bud, you can’t really hear a difference." Does that mean that the cables don’t sound different at all, or that no one at all could hear the difference? No. But the general audibility wasn’t being tested; the capability of the individual to discern between those cables was being tested.

You can ask other question like "Can a bunch of average non-audiophiles tell the difference between A and B cables?" You can set up that test, and potentially get strong results suggesting they can not. (Or the reverse).

You can ask the question can a golden eared audiophile, or a group of such, hear differences? Again...you can get a result relevant to the question the test is set up to investigate.

You can ask "Are the differences between X and Y cable audible in a general sense among human beings?" Then you go and test a wide enough variety of people, with enough tests, look at the results and see in which direction they point - are you stuck with the null hypothesis, or are the results positive for the hypothesis the cable differences are audible? There are any number of scientific tests arriving at such generalities (e.g. with some rare exceptions, humans can’t hear above 20 kHz).

The results are never conclusive in some Absolute sense....but then nothing in science, or life, really is. You just gather ever stronger evidence to support a conclusion.

As I said, I’ve done various blind tests and I draw my own conclusions from my experience, as we all ultimately do (although obviously there are better and worse analysis of how our experience fits with wider sets of facts...)  So for me, if I blind test some items and I find it so difficult to hear the difference that I end up guessing, then it’s sitting at a level of difference that I’m not going to worry much about. I’ll save my money if one is more expensive than the other. And I think it’s too bad more audiophiles don’t avail themselves of this tool - are have been mislead about it by blind test naysayers. Tons of people end up spending amazing amounts of money on items that may not have made the difference they thought. I’ve seen many posts by people who have spent lots of money on cables saying "look, I wish they didn’t make a difference because they cost me so much money, but since they DO make a difference, I’ve spent the money." If such people availed themselves of some blind testing they *may* find out they didn’t need to spend that money. Certainly you can go the route of "I don’t care about all that blind testing stuff - my sighted experience is part of my perception and if I hear a difference, well that’s my experience and I’m happy to pay for it."


That’s cool. I actually go that route sometimes myself. But I don’t see why it’s ever better to do something via less information via more. If one WANTS to make sure their money is paying for "real" performance differences, one can try some blind testing, but if one is happy with the experience of sighted results, one can do that as well.

I guess I'm antediluvian. I got my basic training in things dealing with AC current before WWII, as I was a ham radio operator and built my own transmitter/power supply and antennas. I had to sit for an FCC exam to get my operator's ticket. I had courses in both DC and AC  in college BT (before transistors.) 
After WWII, I began to build my playback systems for 45s, LP vinyl, and reel-to-reel. For years, I had access to a fully-equipped shop and constructed my own speaker enclosures using Thiele-Small parameters to assist designing them.
I switched from tubes to solid state when my favorite KT88 tubes ceased to be made in  the US,  and quite "rolling my own."'
During these years I learned that wire gage, wire material, good shielding and properly-connected terminals DID make a difference; however, esoteric cable wire patterns and claims of directional wiring were plainly snake oil.  Cable esistance, capacitance and inductance parameters DO make a difference.
For over fifty years, I've connected my amp to the speakers with 10 gage Belden wiring, and used 14 gage Belden for interconnects. 
Do I have "Brass Ears?" I don't think so'; however, my current collection of  CD classical  symphonies, concertos, chorales, chamber music, requiems, organ music, and operas are most satisfying.
Disclaimer: My system is Bryston preamp, 4Bsst2 amp, Thiele 2.7 speakers with Thiele SS2.2 sub, Bryston BCD-3 CD spinner, Magnum Dynalab FM tuner. 

Just some thoughts from an Old Fud.

I can tell the difference in cables by treble extension. How open the midrange is. How deep the bass is.  Does the music sound forward or pushed back. There are some of the same differences in equipment. Speaker cables are made all different ways with different materials and shielding etc. To say that we can hear the difference is foolish!

Apparently the old saw is true, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. 

Yup and you can’t teach a new dog old tricks. Lol. 

And Kool Kats?

The stress placed on the test subject in blind tests or any tests depends on the pressure applied. For example The Amazing Randi applied lots of pressure on potential test subjects, even when the device that was the device under was an audio cable or tweak. Fremer was the victim in the Randi Million Dollar Challenge to hear the difference between super expensive cables and some generic cable. A customer of mine was the victim of the Intelligent Chip Million Dollar Challenge.

What are the negotiations involved for Randi’s blind tests? The negotiations themselves produce stress. Choice of test system. The number of test participants. Test protocol, usually involved the requirement for ten consecutive positive test results. Also, the choice of test software, choice of location of the test. Gentle readers, are these requirements or negotiations not cause for great stress when $1 million and or reputation is at stake?

Yeah, prof, I’m the one muddying the waters? Give me a break! That’s exactly what pseudo skeptics charge when someone challenges their dogmatic beliefs.

prof has scrupulously avoided responding to my main point - that negative results of  blind test cannot be generalized. You cannot say that because a blind test result is negative that means the device under test doesn’t work or that there are no audible differences between any two cables, or between two fuses, whatever, being compared. A test is only one data point. If there were ten tests by ten different people or groups in ten different systems and most of the results were negative then you might have something to talk about. 

Yes, quite right. Let's abandon blind testing. In fact let's abandon all scientific criteria altogether and wallow in subjectivity going round and round ad infinitum according to mood.

If that floats your boat, by all means go for it. Just don't try to convince the rest of us with that kind antediluvian attempt at confusion. The whole industry has been going onto it's knees since the 1979s due to that particular kind of quick buck pseudo scientific stink. 
 

cd318,

geoff doesn't even try honest debate where you respond reasonably to what the other party actually wrote.  It's like playing a game of darts with someone who never even hits the board, but keeps tossing darts towards the toilet.  You get tired of picking darts out of the toilet, as that is the game they are really playing.

What he said, times 100. 

I really appreciate your reply elizabeth, thank you!

I leave for a couple hours and look what happens. No single good argument for or agin. I guess I was asking for too much. Lots of tenth grade personal attacks, tho’. And a whole lotta fanny patting by the naysayers. At least that’s something. Let the inquisition continue. The professor doesn’t seem to want to debate, for all his posturing. 😛 Just repeating his same old mantra.

@ prof

"and very slightly tweaked it, say increasing volume by 3dB"

Slightly!? That is simply hilarious. Its sorta the equivalent of saying one should go into a dark room and turn the light on and off to test your sight.

Well, at the very least, this certainly helps explain your position in this discussion.   

taras22,

Would you like to explain further?


Your comment suggests you misunderstand the relationship between altering acoustic energy levels and our perception of loudness.While increasing a sound by 3dB doubles the acoustic energy, we do not perceive a doubling of volume. This site puts it well:

https://www.abdengineering.com/blog/perception-vs-reality/

Perception:
Sound studies tell us time and again that a 3dBA increase in sound level is barely noticeable to the human ear. In fact, you have to raise a sound level by 5dBA before most listeners report a noticeable or significant change. Further, it takes a 10dBA increase before the average listener hears “double the sound.” That’s a far cry from 3dB.

More good info here:

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm

Your reply suggests that raising sound output by 3dB is like going from a dark room to a light room - e.g. implying a difference from soft to loud.  If you thought that raising a sound by 3dB would amount to a major difference in perceived volume, instead of the slight perceived volume increase it really is, you wouldn’t be much use in a mixing studio or post production sound editing job.


Yes, many people *can* perceive smaller increases in sound output, and that factor becomes more pronounced in quick switching scenarios, which is why you really have to be careful level matching for quick switching blind tests.


I can pretty much guarantee that if you were listening in my home theater to a movie, and you left for 1/2 hour, you wouldn’t be able to discern with confidence if I turned it up 1 dB, or 2 dB, and most likely even 3 dB.
(And that’s one reason why audiophiles relying on memory for *truly* subtle sonic differences is problematic).

But quick switching will reveal the differences more easily. I’m altering volume levels all day long, from 1 dB differences to much higher. I chose 3 dB because it is a subtle-but-distinct difference in volume in terms of our perception, that as I said elizabeth would reliably identify in a blind test. (But would not reliably identify, likely, in a test where the time between hearing each file was extended).

So, again, in terms of our perception, yes an increase of 3dB will be heard as a slight tweak in volume, vs a large change in volume. (Which is why if I want to raise the level of one track over another in a subtle degree, but distinctly audible, I often raise it by at least 3dB).


And I chose 3dB as an analogy because it is a subtle *but distinctly audible* change in sound, to illustrate that subtle *but distinctly audible* sounds should be discernible in blind testing fast switching. The claims made for cables are that the changes are *distinctly audible.* (And often not subtle). And if they are distinctly audible - especially audible alterations of bass, high frequencies, etc, they should not disappear in blind testing.


And your problem with this is....?

@prof

"Your comment suggests you misunderstand the relationship between altering acoustic energy levels and our perception of loudness.While increasing a sound by 3dB doubles the acoustic energy, we do not perceive a doubling of volume. "

You can suggest and infer and implicate all you want but that is simply not in what I wrote. And yes I do know a 3db drop is defined as half power and is not related to half acoustic power. That being said, I would contend that we here are not the "average" listeners used in your quote and 3db is not slight as would like us to believe and which btw was the bone of contention ( who knows maybe you were simply projecting and that may go a long way to explaining your problem with cables ) ( btw slight can be defined as " inappreciable, negligible, insignificant" and frankly 3db ain’t none of those eh....and "distinctly" just doesn’t fit well with "inappreciable" or "negligible" or "insignificant" does it )

As for the turning on the light bit, that was just an admittedly silly dig at your obsession with double bind tests, whoops, blind tests. And I did preface it with "sorta the equivalent". Was just trying to get your goat, or more correctly, your herd of goats.

taras22,

Ok, so you made an admittedly silly equivalence between a change in 3dB and the change in lights from on and off in an a room. 


I portrayed that difference as subtle but distinct.  Which it is. And for reasons backed up by the links I gave.

So what's left?  What does claiming you and others here are not "average" have to do with what I've been saying, which is that if the audible differences between cables are so obvious and distinctly heard  as many claim (by Golden Eared audiophiles, if you wish), they should be discernible in blind testing by those same people?


It looks like this was the end game of your comment:

Was just trying to get your goat, or more correctly, your herd of goats.

Great, more attempts to bait and annoy from the pro-audiophile-cables side.   What is it that brings out this need to bait instead of discuss?


Again, I find it ironic that people here complain that skeptics are troll-like and are just baiting others, and yet take a look at the character of the responses I keep getting here.

(And, thanks to those of you who *have* been open-minded to this discussion...unlike for instance the OP).

Oh calm down....was just poking some fun at you....So please accept my apologies , I simply didn’t realize you were so thin skinned ( though the smell of burning martyr should have been a clue, can't believe I didn't notice ).

And btw not really a pro in the audiophile cable side, it’s more of a fun side project ( though it does produce a cash flow so I suppose a pro technically ). Actually I’m a pro in the same sausage making machine as you, and coincidentally, more or less in the same department.

Not not a one way conversation. I’m in this hobby to enjoy the music. I listen to people’s thoughts. This ain’t debate class for me. I talk and debate for a living.  I know they make a difference and they matter. I honestly don’t read the super long thesis questions. No disrespect. I just don’t think you have good hearing. So for me to respond is pointless