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Harley quote

Regarding two aftermarket power cables: "These differences in the shapes of the musical waveforms are far too small to see or measure with even the most sophisticated technology, yet we as listeners not only routinely discriminate such differences, we sometimes find musical meaning in these differences."

 Nonsense. Just because people claim to "routinely discriminate" differences doesn't mean it's true or they're right. Apparently many have witnessed UFOs but that doesn't mean they actually saw extraterrestrial visitors, does it? Some have seen/heard a deity speaking to them "routinely"; does that imply that they are surely communing with an unseen/unmeasurable spiritual force(s)? Can we not put a little more effort into confirmatory reality-testing first when "the most sophisticated technology" can find nothing in 2020? (Of course, speaker cables can measure differently as per here, here, even if not necessarily audible in many cases by the time we connect amp to speaker.)

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Showing 2 responses by psag

psag
518 posts
 
Harley is the audiophile world’s ultimate subjectivist. He believes that the ear/brain interface is endowed with magical powers, and that sound quality transcends any attempt to qualify it by any type of objective measure.  This proves to be quite convenient for him.

Just one example: I remember being dismayed at seeing self-published pictures of his previous listening room, which was his living room. It was an untreated three-walled room with one side completely open to the rest of the house.  Irredeemable by objective acoustic measures, yet he claimed that it was a great sounding room.
psag
518 posts
 
“...a seemingly poorly designed room CAN sound amazing.”
Maybe to your ears, but the sound by objective measures is not amazing. Distortion can sound subjectively good, but its not correct and is something to be avoided.

A room with one side wall absent cannot by definition sound amazing.  Using conventional two-channel dynamic drivers, imaging will be hopelessly messed up in such a case. Unless one is listening in the extreme near-field, which defeats the purpose of setting up a six-figure ‘big’ system in a large room.

I’m guessing at least half of the posters here would go ballistic at the sight of the word ‘correct’.  But there are correct and incorrect ways to set up a room; there’s no getting around the laws of physics.  

“Some of the supposedly best designed rooms are often horrible sounding.”
No. A correctly constructed and outfitted room will sound right, by definition.

To focus on something relatively minor like cables, while ignoring the laws of acoustics, is something else to be avoided.
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