Do speaker cables need a burn in period?
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Mitch2 said: |
Skeptics would argue the Moon landing was faked by Stanley Kubrick, commissioned by NASA, on the elaborate set of the lunar landscape, of his movie, Space Odyssey 2001, and they will point to many inconsistencies such as no background stars in the photos of the astronauts on the moon surface, the fact that the American flag is waving in the photos (no air on the Moon, hel-loo!) and that actually being able to send a manned rocket ship to the moon and land a man on its surface in a precalculated manner is obviously way beyond the technical capabilities of the 1960s, especially the hugely complicated and laborious orbital mechanics, transfer orbits included, and lack of super computers, which were best realized in the movie, The Martian with Matt Damon. Even on his deathbed Kubrick is rumored to have whispered, I faked the landing. I needed the money to pay for Space Odyssey. |
It just bothers some people to see nonsensical claims put forth as if they are gospel. And other people like Geoffkait just like to troll and stir things up. I think it’s settled. Profs explanations and points are very rational and make a ton of sense while GK and the rest are completely the opposite. |
Says the guy with 11,776 posts ;-) Many of them trolling and insulting people on the forum. If we are going to wonder about motivations, geoffkait would seem the place to start. (Though, admittedly, the motivations aren't that hard to infer). |
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One can’t help wondering why in the world anyone would pursue this issue so strenuously, so verbosely, so relentlessly. What can be the motivation for being so long winded, so argumentative? To show off philosophy skills? To show off writing skills? To prove that he’s a real skeptic? To prove he too smart to be fooled by audiophile tricks? Or too smart to be fooled by unscupulous and lying high end cable manufacturers? Or to be taken in by a conspiracy of true believers, money hungry manufacturers and deluded audiophiles who drank the Jim Jones Kool Aide. I’m serious. What drives these people? What a waste of time. |
andy2, Prof,There have been a lot of measurements been made. It’s called our "ears" and the data has been recorded by countless of listeners all over the world. Unless you call them all liars or you say our ears are not valid instruments. That is a repetition of the same assertion you made before, including repeating the strawman false dichotomy of the "liar" or that "therefore all our inferences based on our hearing is unreliable." I already dealt with those assertions in detail. Since I don’t see how your reply interacts with the arguments I’ve raised against it, I’m not sure how to respond. How about this: Millions of people around the world attribute their health to homeopathy. Does that mean that homeopathic claims are correct? Millions and millions of people, and practitioners, believe that the explanations for all sorts of naturopathic therapies are vindicated based on their subjective experience of the therapy. Not to mention the millions in thrall of any number of treatments based on bogus ideas, but which "subjectively tested" are claimed to work. Ready for your coffee enema yet? Not to mention the countless contradictory supernatural belief systems vetted on similar grounds. Don’t you think that millions of people actually be wrong about something? And can that explanation not be put down to a problem in the method they have used to reach their conclusion? Can I presume you do at least agree that people can be wrong - large numbers of people! - in the conclusions they reach based on their subjective experience? If so, pointing to "countless" people believing they have experienced audible cable burn in isn't really getting us anywhere. (And, how many people do you actually think have advocated for cable burn in? Also, what are you doing with the negative results? I don't hear any difference in "burn in" whether it's cables or other devices I've bought, and I'm far from the only one. Get outside the confines of the typical audiophile forum to other audio/video enthusiast forums, and you'll see plenty who guffaw at the audiophile claims of "burn in" and who have not experienced any such thing. Does your method entail ignoring negative results and only counting the positive claims? Can I presume you do not reject all the data we have on human biases and how they sway perception? Can I presume you do not reject that this applies to all our senses, including that people can be wrong even about what they think they hear? If so, how are you accounting for the facts of human bias in this method where you are appealing strictly to subjective reports? I have already, in detail, dealt with the "problem" you felt you raised, suggesting that my argument denies the utility of all subjective reports, or of our hearing in general. I showed why that is a strawman, and made a case for why it makes sense to provisionally accept reports based on hearing (e.g. in the realm well-known to be audible) and when it makes sense to be more cautious and ask for better evidence (those claims in the realm of the subtle, or in the realm where the technical/audible claims are controversial). |
taras22, Prof: " Do we just accept that any hypothesis can be floated, and then decided by appeal to subjective impressions? " taras22: Uhhhh, no. Then, your solution to the problems I posed is...? But throwing around claims gleaned from the application of half-baked and mis-applied protocols isn’t the answer either. Sure. Obviously. But I don’t know that you’ve identified such misapplications (at least in what I wrote). And even when you do identify an error, isn’t that a way of suggesting how protocol CAN be tightened? At least attempting to base claims on measurable phenomenon, and produce measurable support for a claim, as well as take the problem of bias seriously in listening tests, would be showing effort in the right direction of taking the problems seriously. (That is after all why science has been successful). Rather than throwing out dubiously supported technical claims and just vetting them by methods known to suffer bias effects. |
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@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. |
LOL. The very link you are referring to as "puffing" is promoting just such a product: "However, the best solution is to treat your cables using a designated cable burn-in device such as Nordost’s Vidar.: Geoff, do you ever just slow down to test your claims with reality? I noticed the post you removed was rather rashly inaccurate as well. (Uh...it was Nordost’s "blog" on Nordost’s official site, promoting a Nordost product) ;-) |
Terminology like drastically improves or radically improves or transforms performance are what is known as puffing. There is no prohibition against puffing. Just so that you know. Besides, it’s not like burning in cables is a product or anything. Give me a break! The term drastic improvement, even if someone at Nordost said it, perhaps some English major, who knows, hardly justifies a long philosophical diatribe. Ironically, IIRC Nordost is not (rpt not) on board the directionality train, maybe they had an epiphany recently, so skeptics take note. OK, let the inquisition continue. |
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taras22, So what is your answer to the dilemma posed by the claims in high end audio? Do we just accept that any hypothesis can be floated, and then decided by appeal to subjective impressions? If so, that puts high end audio on par with Mesmerism, and any other pseudoscience. Surely the phenomena in audio are in the same physical world as science is dealing with, so why should audio be just exempted from the concerns, and controls, that we’ve found to be justified in science? But if we are going to say that we aren’t going to allow magic, but point out it’s engineering and we are dealing with technical problems, then we would want plausible technical hypothesis, right? That is, hypothesis based on plausible extrapolations from other known phenomenon, to explain the new phenomenon - e.g. if a manufacturer is going to give an explanation for cable burn in, it should be at least plausible based on some technical explanation. If the explanation appeals to completely unknown processes, then we have to ask why it is plausible in the first place! And at the very least, an explanation appealing to unknown processes should have quite a high bar to pass when being tested, beyond "I feel convinced I heard something." And if you are giving a hypothesis that is appealing to known, measurable phenomena, then it makes sense your hypothesis would involve physically testing/measuring to see whether you are right, and if you offer a "solution" to a measurable technical phenomenon, you should be able to provide measurement data showing you have SOLVED the problem. Once you allow pure subjectivity to vet all these claims, you are in to the world of Mesmerism and all the other pseudosciences and fringe belief systems, because THEY ware justified by the same "method." We see this suspicious disconnect between the claims and explanations of cable manufacturers, vs the claims that would pass muster scientifically, all the time. They throw out a techy-sounding "problem" their method "solves" but for some reason it’s never shown technically - via measurements showing the problem is solved. They move from the techy-sounding hypothesis, to subjectivity, to...of course it worked! And the types of "explanations" cable manufacturers often give for phenomenon are incredibly sketchy in making claims, with little evidence. Take Nordost’s page "explaining" cable burn-in: https://nordost.com/blog/what-is-cable-burn-in/
Note the claim cable burn-in: "DRASTICALLY IMPROVES UPON PERFORMANCE" That’s a BIG claim. If there is a DRASTIC change in performance from a burned in cable, that obviously should mean some significant physical change is occurring (we aren’t appealing to magic, right?) that should be measurable. Why don’t we GET those measurements for the claims Nordost has just made? Instead, we get this: During the manufacturing process, as insulation is extruded over the conductors, gases can become trapped. This combined with the high electrical charges often found in new cables, result in a brittle and bright sound that lacks the detail and depth desired for music reproduction. Look at all the ways this is utterly insufficient as an "explanation." Where is the actual technical explanation, and evidence, that such trapped gases would results in the sonic defects - "brittle bright highs etc" - they describe? I don’t see any in that statement. But Nordost goes on: When cables are first put into use, their directionality is not securely established. However, once the Vidar begins running current through the cables, the trapped gases are dissipated and small impurities in the conductor’s metal begin to act like a diode, favoring current flow in a particular direction. By using extremely wide bandwidth signal as well as a range of both ultra-low and high frequency sweeps, the Vidar stresses the conductors, neutralizes charges, improves the way that signals pass through metal and ultrasonically conditions the surface of the conductors. It is these changes in both the conductor and insulation material that refines performance in audio cables. So they say. But this explanation proposes: 1. A number of technical, physical changes claimed to occur in burning in a cable. The obvious question is, if they can’t measure the phenomena they refer to, then how can they tell us they occur in the first place as a problem to be solved? But presuming all the technical issues exist described in pre-burned in cable exist as claimed, and are measurable, WHERE ARE THE MEASUREMENTS SHOWING CABLE BURN IN ALTERS AND FIXES THOSE PROBLEMS? Why is that so conspicuously missing from Nordost? They make a technical claim based on measurable phenomena, but don’t provide experimental measurements showing they have FIXED the problem. We just have to take their word, apparently. How convenient for marketing! 2. If it is mere subjective impressions that Nordost is using to vet, and sell this "solution," then this is no different from any other pseudoscience, where fanciful techy-sounding hypotheses are floated, without any objectively experimental protocol offered, no measurable, repeatable data offered. But which rely on the human ability to fool ourselves or be led via biases to think we "hear" what may not actually be there. Certainly many audiophiles just don’t seem to care about this, going with the "if I think I hear a difference, there is a difference" heuristic. But you can’t say that there is no basis for reasonable doubts about many claims made by cable manufacturers, and in particular cable-burn in, if the evidence for it does not escape the level of pseudoscience. |
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. |
I suspect that the expression, “tests are performed using generally accepted methods” opens up a whole can of worms since as we have already see there really are no generally accepted test methods. Even the lofty double blind test has no official protocol or methodology. Reasonable people disagree with how to perform a double blind test. As I’ve oft pointed out, negative results of blind tests cannot be used to categorically claim failure of the device(s) under test. Results of a blind test, in and of itself, cannot be generalized. Now, if there were twenty or thirty independent blind tests, however they were performed, one might look at the pass/fail ratio and try to draw conclusions and find comfort. Positive results are a different story, inasmuch as positive results are obtained in spite of all the things that can affect the results of a test. |
The Stealth Flagship Sakra V12 XLR interconnects are actually Directional, at least according to Stealth. Home /Sakra V12 XLR Interconnect (Pair) Sakra V12 XLR Interconnect (Pair) by Stealth Audio Starting from :$16,000.00 Length Price with selection: $16,000.00 Quantity The Sakra V12 is quite different from the standard Sakra: the cables are indeed directional – since they are CONICAL inside and outside, and feature our new “vari-cross” geometry – the cross-section of the cable varies along their length; this is done to improve the impedance matching between the source and the receiving end; Sonically, the cables are more relaxed right out of the box, and sound yet more full-bodied (and thus natural) while having improved resolution and transparency over the "original" Sakra. Because of the improved geometry the Sakra V12 is more relaxed and natural (right out of the box, in a brand new condition the V12 sounds more “broken in” – compare to the original Sakra with 1000+ hours on it) In other words, the Sakra V12 is simply a better cable and is our flagship analog interconnect for 2013. Addendum: Śakra V17 Limited Edition. Double runs of Vari-Cross amorphous wire-in-Helium, C-37 treated, STEALTH custom RCA and XLR. [Whoa! You don’t see C-37 everyday. Or wire-in-Helium for that matter!] |
Then there are the STEALTH audio cables which uses amorphous metal which has no directionality.
Indra V16 Interconnect Retail: $7000/1 m RCA, $9300/1 m XLRSakra V16 Interconnect Retail: $12,000/1 m RCA, $16,000/1 m XLR Those prices are about 10X to 17X my GroverHuffman cables. No thanks even if they were 200% better. The reviewer on today's Positive Feedback Mag was comparing them to $9800/m CH Precision ICs. Maybe they are high end but what if they are not as good? |
@andy2 Ha, as a bit of a philosophy nerd, yes Hume is one of my favorites! *nerd hat on* Yes, best to assume most people are telling the truth - which is justified inductively (most of the time people tell the truth), by the principle of parsimony (prima facie acceptance of truth-telling tends to explain people’s behavior without the additional hypothesis they have a motive for lying) , and in discussions by the principle of charity (if we didn’t accept that people believe what they are claiming to believe, and instead presumed the other side is lying, conversation would be impossible, not to mention it seems special pleading if we hold ourselves to be truth-telling but do not presume this for others). See what happens when you bring up philosophy?! ;-) But that idea was already taken care of in my previous replies as a red herring. Second, we have to assume that our ears are reliable after all they are transducers just like any other sensors. The assumption of the general reliability of our senses. Yes. But of course not wholesale. We need to recognize their limits, and where they are fallible too, right? That’s why I have a carbon monoxide detector in my house. Now let’s say somebody gave me some data that prove cable burn in does exist, I could very say "I don’t trust your equipment. It’s possible that the equipment is not accurate." The person would say it’s not possible because the equipment has been calibrated. I then would say how do I know the calibration was accurate because the equipment you used to calibrate is not correct. That person then told me it’s not possible because that piece of equipment that he used to calibrate was already calibrated by another even more accurate equipment. I then would say I don’t trust that either. It’s possible that equipment is not even accurate. I want you to prove to me beyond any doubt that the data is absolutely accurate. But it’s not simply good enough to raise possibilities in negating a claim; we need to raise "plausibilities." If my peanut butter sandwich disappears from my picnic table, and I know my dog is around and my dog likes to snatch food from the table, and likes peanut butter...AND my dog has bread crumbs now around his mouth...then this is a plausible explanation for the missing sandwhich. If someone suggests that Kim Jong Un’s secret agents "could have" stolen the sandwich for him to eat, that’s logically "possible" but hardly "plausible." Now, presuming that the type of data and measuring techniques your "somebody" used are IF WORKING appropriate to the task (if not, the whole analogy fails anyway)....then there is already plausibility on the side of the measurements and conclusions. If you raise an objection that the equipment "might have been" out of calibration, it’s up to you to show that’s plausible, not merely possible. As it happens, you probably could raise some case for the plausibility, in the sense that equipment can go out of calibration and this is one reason we want to try and repeat our results - especially by other parties trying to replicate your results or prove you wrong. (If this person was presenting his data as decisive, I’d be already dubious about this). So it’s fair to say something like "this data looks sound for your hypothesis...and constitutes some evidence in favor of it. However, given what can go wrong it terms of equipment or experimenter error, I’d like to see these results replicated." (There’s also background assumptions and facts that will demand more before we assent to a conclusion in some cases over others - the infamous Opera Experiment yielding faster than light particles being a good example - but will leave that for now) . The problem is that each time you raise the ante by saying "But THIS could have been out of alignment, but THAT could have been out of alignment" you raise the burden ever further for the plausibility of your alternative explanation. Are X, Y and Z measuring systems USUALLY out of calibration? The more you add, the less likely your alternative explanation. Presumably your friend is starting off with a plausible hypothesis derived from what is generally known and generally accepted about the properties of electricity and cables, which makes his hypothesis "there shouldn’t be an audible difference with burned in cables" plausible in the first place. And as an alternative hypothesis to explain the reports of cable differences with burn in, we have mountains of established evidence for bias/perceptual errors making that alternative plausible. If you wanted to raise objections, mere skepticism isn’t enough, you’d have to show there are actual good reasons to doubt the results, not raise mere "possibilities" that "something might have gone wrong." And if your friend is using in his tests generally accepted methods used successfully and reliably elsewhere, then you have the harder road to plow in defending your skepticism. And nothing is "proven beyond any doubt" in the empirical method. Cheers, and thanks for the conversation! (Will a bunch of people find a conversation like this a bore? For sure! But as analogluver pointed out, some people will no doubt find it interesting). |
This whole argument highlights in no uncertain terms the ever widening chasm that exists between the mid fi community and the high end community. If it were not for the fact that many audiophiles have learned how to get their systems to the point where hearing cable and fuse directionality and other tweaks that provide subtle but powerful improvements to those who deserve to reap their benefits. But these tweaks are not silver bullets. Not by a long shot. They won’t necessarily make or break a system, they won’t even necessarily be audible in many systems, or audible by some people who may or may not be trained/experienced to hear changes in tweaks. So it goes. Live and let die. Made the scene, week to week Day to day, hour to hour The gate is straight Deep and wide Break on through to the other side Break on through to the other side |
I have found that directionality in wires can commence with insertion into a circuit whereby the directionality is set by usage. My cabling has directionality markers which are employed to install them in one direction for all future uses. Whether or not the wire is directional from it's inception/drawing out is possible but doesn't appear to make a difference in my cabling. The wire in my cabiling has been flattened and embossed under high pressure so that it's crystal structure must have been altered anyway. I keep my cables directional after first use and continuous use. |
prof, (or should I call you professor Hume :-) First I appreciate that you're being very polite in your response considering some of the other posters around here. I think I have to make an assumption that in order for the human race to work, one has to at least establish that most people are honest and tell the truth. Yes there are people who are dishonest but I don't think human has evolved this far if most people are dishonest and all we do is just lying to other people. Second, we have to assume that our ears are reliable after all they are transducers just like any other sensors. Now let's say somebody gave me some data that prove cable burn in does exist, I could very say "I don't trust your equipment. It's possible that the equipment is not accurate." The person would say it's not possible because the equipment has been calibrated. I then would say how do I know the calibration was accurate because the equipment you used to calibrate is not correct. That person then told me it's not possible because that piece of equipment that he used to calibrate was already calibrated by another even more accurate equipment. I then would say I don't trust that either. It's possible that equipment is not even accurate. I want you to prove to me beyond any doubt that the data is absolutely accurate. There you see, I am using your argument against you, professor Hume. |
@andy2 Again in order for you to be right, everyone else must be wrong. And I just explicitly said I’m not proposing that I have an answer "that I am right about" in regards to cable burn in. I just wrote that I DON’T claim to have that answer, so I’m wondering why you are ignoring the actual content of what I’m writing. I guess you’re saying our hearing is not a valid way of measuring. If you cannot trust your hearing, then what else can you trust? Once in awhile a person hearing can be fooled, but what you’re saying is everybody hearing on earth has been fooled. No, I haven’t said or implied any such thing, which is why I specified: "It’s the same when we are talking about audible differences that are either very small, or exist in areas that are controversial. " Clearly our hearing is to a significant degree reliable! It helps us successfully survive and get through every day, after all. And we can reliably identify all sorts of sources where the characteristics are large enough to reliably distinguish. For instance, we reliably identify the voice on the other end of the phone as our mother, our friend, etc. But as audible differences become ever more subtle, our ability to discern and remember those differences tend to reduce as well. If I played you an audio file at 40 dB and you went away for a day, and when you came back and I played the file at 80 dB, you would have no problem identifying which session was played louder. But if the difference were only 1 dB, you’d have a MUCH harder time (essentially impossible) having confidence about whether which session was louder or not. To the degree we are talking about subtle sonic differences, it makes sense to take this in to consideration, wouldn’t you agree? (This is why being able to switch quickly between A and B is helpful for reliably identifying subtle differences - where audiophiles often presume that they can identify identify subtle differences over much longer periods of time - "that trumpet sounds a bit more burnished with these cables than it did the last time I listened to this piece, a month ago with my old cables!") Most of the audible differences we discern in life are those we would EXPECT to be reliably differentiated, based on the gross timbral/spectral/harmonic characteristics we are talking about, and given what we know of human hearing. Grossly audible differences can be measured between, say instruments (or even the same instruments played differently). Speakers fall in to this category. The measurable differences between speakers tends to fall well in to the category we know to be audible to human hearing, so when someone talks about hearing a difference between speaker A and B their claims are entirely plausible. In contrast, we have little to no measured differences being shown between things like an audio signal using different high end AC cables, or burned in vs non-burned in cables. And the technical explanations made on behalf of these claims, aside from often being all over the map depending on which manufacturer or audiophile you are talking to, are disputed among those with the credentials to know better. (E.g Electrical Engineers who are not trying to sell you expensive cables). So there are grounds on which to be cautious about some of the claims of audiophiles and the high end audio companies - the ones in which the technical grounds are dubious or in dispute, in which objective measurable evidence seems missing (unlike that which can be shown for any number of audible differences we know to exist), and in which the claims are vetted almost entirely in a subjective manner susceptible to bias. Is this position clear enough, and I hope, reasonable to you now? Thanks. |
prof, I guess you're saying our hearing is not a valid way of measuring. If you cannot trust your hearing, then what else can you trust? Once in awhile a person hearing can be fooled, but what you're saying is everybody hearing on earth has been fooled. Again in order for you to be right, everyone else must be wrong. Every single manufacturers have been hearing the wrong thing. Every single professional reviewers must be wrong. I am not sure you have a way out in your argument. To say you're right and everyone else is wrong is in itself an invalid argument. |
