Well said, and drives directly to the nub of the problem of embracing the idea of using double blind tests without some real solid scientific rigour. Read, you can’t wrap yourself in the cloak of science and use a testing system that lacks an absolutely solid testing protocol. Going down that road simply yields a "science" version of truthiness, which is fine for conversation fodder after a few cold beverages but as Geoff correctly points out don’t produce nothing you can take to the bank eh.
Do speaker cables need a burn in period?
I have heard some say that speaker cables do need a 'burn in', and some say that its totally BS.
What say you?
What say you?
Showing 12 responses by taras22
@prof " Do we just accept that any hypothesis can be floated, and then decided by appeal to subjective impressions? " Uhhhh, no. But throwing around claims gleaned from the application of half-baked and mis-applied protocols isn't the answer either. Though do agree with you that some crystal clear clarity would be awfully nice. |
@prof "May I ask (just in case you were serious): How in the world do you think a cable could cause "one note bass?" (That is a cable that wasn't flat out defective)." Seems we may have gotten to a " the rub " moment. So here is the thing, a note in very strict terms is simply pitch and duration. Things that could be seen as more or less just quantitative thingees. Which is something that even the cables you would most likely favour could easily transmit ( much like a wire can transmit something like a telegram signal ). The thing is, the stuff that folks who listen to with stereos is usually music, and music is much more complex than simple pitch and duration because it is the province of musical tone. And yeah musical tone is a close relative of the note but it has this qualitative aspect that is a critical difference. "Traditionally in Western music, a musical tone is a steady periodic sound. A musical tone is characterized by its duration, pitch, intensity (or loudness), and timbre (or quality).[1] The notes used in music can be more complex than musical tones, as they may include aperiodic aspects, such as attack transients, vibrato, and envelope modulation. A simple tone, or pure tone, has a sinusoidal waveform. A complex tone is a combination of two or more pure tones that have a periodic pattern of repetition, unless specified otherwise"A bog standard cable should at the very least be adept at transmitting something as simple as pitch and duration but dealing with more complex timbre, transient vibrato and envelope modulation is a much more difficult undertaking and requires something more refined than a bog standard cable because these qualitative items demand a better phase coherence and freedom from reactive elements such as skin effect than a bog standard cable can offer. And furthermore this ability has be applied to a very broad band signal whereas most cable tech/theory/application tends to concern itself with very narrow bandwidths ( a strategy which communication electronics uses to neatly avoid the problems that phase coherence and reactive elements bring to the table.). So....any cable can transmit a one note bass but not necessarily a musical tone which is the fine,tonally textured bass that Nonoise refers to and which musical lovers strive to hear as completely as possible when they listen to their systems.That requires something much more refined than bog standard ( which meets the existing theoretic specs and the attendant testing protocols but really sucks at presenting the qualitative aspects of music ). Btw we had a cable listening session the other day and just for giggles we plugged in a bog standard Belden based cable that we happen to have around ( it was from a company we all know but will not be mentioned here to protect the innocent, and the guilty ) Bottom line , it gave all the quantitative stuff you and your oscilloscope could hope for, but the qualitative stuff that draws you into the musical event was sadly missing. Read it was not involving, or fun, or foot tapping, it sucked ( and yeah that is seriously subjective and you will most likely scream bloody murder....but here is the thing....you can always go back to listen to telegraph wires....and we can go back to our subjective bliss... ). |
@Nonoise My pleasure, and btw your comments started the ball rolling on that deluge of verbiage, and then that listening session I mentioned earlier kicked it into overdrive. Its funny, that "mystery" cable was not bad at all, in fact it had a very good voicing, but the head scratching part was trying to figure out what was missing and why, because it was so uninvolving ( almost like listening to bad digital ). And then it came back to your comment about one note bass. |
@prof " Using my current Thiel 2.7 speakers this is true, but it was eve more true with my bigger 3.7 speakers. I could go to my friend’s place, listen to a system using $50,000 of Nordost cable and come home to bass reproduction that easily surpassed that system. When over the past couple years I auditioned a large variety of speakers, in systems using many of the top high end cable brands we could name, every time I came home and played the same bass torture tracks on my system, it distinguished itself in how controlled, beautifully pitched and even holographically placed the bass could appear. " And surely you have ample measurements to absolutely and fully prove all those assertions beyond the shadow of any doubt ( really looking forward to seeing the measurements that define just how holographically placed the bass really is ). Or are we going to have to trust hearsay based on information drawn from listening experiences using your, uhhhh, ears ? And one more little thing, is it just me or is anyone else detecting the acrid smell of burning hypocrite suddenly wafting through this thread, though it could well be that three day old burrito I had for lunch, I mean it looked OK....but you never know eh.... OK....silliness aside for a moment ( and frankly this is at root just foolish fun eh ). Are you going to the Toronto Audio Fest ? We will be sharing a room with Charisma Audio. Would really love it if you dropped in and said hi, seriously ( but please don’t tell me you are a Leaf fan....there are some bridges that are simply too far ). |
" Mr. Jeavons said I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and those problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end. And what he meant was that maths wasn’t life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end. " "I picked this quote because I think it really describes Christopher. Though it never states it directly in the book, Christopher displays many characteristics of someone with autism. He hates small talk because he finds it pointless, does not understand facial expression, and does not get similes or metaphors (15). One thing he does understand is math. With math he does not need to try and understand people. In the quote above, it is said that the reason he loves math so much is because, unlike people, it is not abstract or unclear. He finds a safe place. Dealing with people is confusing and uncomfortable for him. At the beginning of the book, he gets so overwhelmed by the police officer that he winds up punching him (7). But with math, all he needs to do is be by himself and solve a straight forward problem. When Christopher finds himself in stressful situations he goes off into tangents that revolve around math and science, which comfort him. After he gets arrested he discusses what the Milky Way is and how the stars are aligned in it; instead of thinking about the uncomfortable situation he is in, he uses math and science to distract himself. Anything that is predictable or can be like a puzzle, like physics and astronomy, is good and easy for him. Anything outside of that range makes him feel unsafe and insecure. That is why Christopher decides to turn the death of Wellington into a murder mystery. He would rather look at it as a puzzle than an emotion situation. " Or......numbers and maths are cool and neat and stuff but the big problem with such thingees is when it really gets down to brass tacks or speaker cables because 9x5 may very well equal 42. |
Speaking of ABX testing. Interesting result, very interesting. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I had a long conversation during the show with Thorsten Loesch of Abbington Musical Research and IFI. He told me a fascinating story about confirmation bias. That’s when you are so sure of something that even strong evidence to the contrary will not persuade you to change your mind. Thorsten put together a blind ABX testing where he told participants it was a comparison of two power cables. But when he went behind the curtains, ostensibly to change the power cable, what he actually did was switch the speaker cables on one channel, so the system was playing out of phase. Thorsten had three different types of audiophiles take his test: subjectivists, objectivists, and those who were neither. The subjectivists and neutral listeners heard the effects of the system being thrown out of phase. The objectivists heard no differences. It was a robust test with clearly correlated results. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The fact that the objectivists in Thorsten’s test were the ones who were so set in their opinions that it blinded them to the aural facts in front of their ears is a delicious irony. Why? Because those audiophiles who embrace ABX testing with the most fervor are those who believe most strongly in effects of expectation bias, which is why sighted testing is, in their eyes, flawed. Thorsten’s test indicates a strong tendency for objectivists to listen with closed ears whether the test is blind or sighted, which isn’t very objective, is it? |
"What is a robust test? Robustness testing has also been used to describe the process of verifying the robustness (i.e. correctness) of test cases in a test process. ANSI and IEEE have defined robustness as the degree to which a system or component can function correctly in the presence of invalid inputs or stressful environmental conditions. " Which produces.... "Robust statistics are statistics with good performance for data drawn from a wide range of probability distributions, especially for distributions that are not normal. Robust statistical methods have been developed for many common problems, such as estimating location, scale, and regression parameters." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Standards_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Electrical_and_Electronics_Engineers |