Interesting read. The part about different recording studios sounding different, even when they use the same microphones in the same hall, really resonates with me. In my youth, my classical CD collection was organized primarily by label. I considered myself a connoisseur of label sounds, basking in the combined effect they created with the musical performance. The album art and liner notes, which some CDs still had, also added quite a bit to the experience, no doubt coloring my perception of the sound quality itself.
How does cable construction affect sonic character?
I think this altered cartoon expresses the gap between cable skeptics and believers. No one knows what happens in the brain, the machinery between the engineered cable and the subjective experience (expressed in language). It's something miraculous -- or, for skeptics -- it's nothing.
17 responses Add your response
Thanks for the link. Just looking at an article on the 10 biggest lies in audio and I'm already scratching my head at the claim that "Whatever vacuum tubes can do in a piece of audio equipment, solid-state devices can do better, at lower cost, with greater reliability....As for the "tube sound," there are two possibilities: (1) It's a figment of the deluded audiophile's imagination, or (2) it's a deliberate coloration introduced by the manufacturer to appeal to corrupted tastes, in which case a solid-state design could easily mimic the sound if the designer were perverse enough to want it that way." Still, it's nice to see firmly wrought opinions even when they're (to my mind) bordering on ridiculous. My guess is that there will be a lot in here that I will agree with, too. | ||
@hilde45 - here’s a link to the entire hard-cover Audio Critic library as it currently exists. I found them to be very interesting reading, although I certainly didn’t agree with everything they wrote. Still, the Audio Critic is a piece of high end audio history that is worth looking at, IMO. There is also a link to their later "web zine" on the page. | ||
@chayro Thanks for sending the link to that article. I see that the article is called "The Wire and Cable Scene: Facts, Fictions, and Frauds Part II." Do you have a link to the issue with "Part I"? Can you share that? Thanks again. | ||
For anyone interested, here's an old article from the Audio Critic, demonstrating how differences in resistance, inductance and capacitance affect frequency response at the speaker. One thing - I believe they used 10 meters of cable, which could certainly exacerbate the differences in measurements over, say, 10 feet of cable, but here it is anyway. https://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/mags/The_Audio_Critic_16_r.pdf | ||
Thank you for your most intelligent and interesting response. Your testing results are very insightful. I quoted your comment above because this is exactly where an email debate with a well known bass trap producer and I foundered. He was firm that everything that could be measured physically that is related to audio has been measured. My counter-claim was that since we are still in the medieval ages when it comes to perception and brain research, we simply cannot know for certain that we are measuring all that is necessary on the physics side. That’s where we broke off our correspondence -- not least when he started throwing words like "dupes" and "shills" got into the mix. He argued well up to a point but then went ad hominem on those who claim to hear differences. Thanks for re-presenting your post! Trying to digest it... @teo_audio @noske
Thanks for your post. I always learn from you. I cannot actually tell if you think I’m a cable skeptic or not. I’m not a skeptic. Indeed, the very point of my cartoon is not that cables don’t make a difference. I’m actually getting at YOUR point, namely that the connections between physics, physiology, perception, and interpretation are so poorly mapped out that the lack of a specific answer -- in the cartoon, that’s the "miracle occurs" joke -- causes some people to become skeptics. But, and we agree on this, that is bad reasoning. In other words, I’m trying to add some detail to the breakdown point in the inquiry, not take a side. (Maybe you see that, but I cannot tell for sure.)
| ||
Cable construction, specifically spacing between connectors, can affect the capacitance and inductance, which, if large enough, have measurable effects on frequency response at the speaker. The science guys do not say all cables sound the same. They say that cables that measure the same sound the same. “Cable believers” as many refer to them, believe that cables that measure the same can sound different. Take your choice. It’s your money and ears. | ||
A good sommelier can determine by taste which particular area a wine comes from, which grape, even which particular vineyard and which year. It comes from experience and his/her hyper-sensitive taste buds and smell. Can a laboratory instrument capable of chemical measurements do the same? I doubt it. I think our listening skills are like that. Some of us are more sensitive to sounds than others. I think listening over a long period of time, and listening to lots of different systems and components brings experience to be able to discern like a good sommelier does. Once you have it, it’s very easy to hear very subtle differences.
| ||
It might be old hat for some, but it's not necessarily so for everyone. | ||
Just a general note for everyone, the kind of note that has been written here dozens of times, or more, in such threads.. The condensed angry version, of course. tomorrow it might be the kind and gentle overly involved life sucking 20 post version that falls on the all too common 'not listening' ears.. but not today. perhaps today we might get lucky and one malcontent will accept and understand the angry version. That would be nice. ~~~~~~~~ The ear’s sensitivities are not totally conscious some are unconscious and we can get tired when listening and miss details, in similar fashion as we can with eyes. We slide those filters around and like the eye, we build up detail we understand, over time. and it’s all about very subtle changes in the signal, and that does not show up in the measurement methodology that is in use in the vast number of measurements of cables. to add, each eye is different and each ear is different. Like intelligence we can have dumb minds vs smart minds, and smart ears vs dumb ears. With eyes, we can discern VERY small changes in color and tonality, the kind that the finest measurement systems MISS ENTIRELY. I have experience in this in the lab, of a company that makes the finest artist paints on the planet, and I’ve worked in making the best video screens this world knows and I’ve done the same for CRT projectors and digital projectors. All at the the TOP of the trade. I know what I’m talking about. There’s the alphabet and rote learning book based standards and references they feed you in schools...which is not the final word, it is the starting point for your life learning adventure!!!.... and then there’s the real world Peak Lore. Big Difference. the top is the smallest part of the smallest part, where the one percent have another one percent of them, above them. the sames sort of things happen in the world of measurement of audio signals and the human ear. There is a huge body of work regarding ears and hearing, and all which is connected to that. so don’t let some rubber stamp using poorly informed scientism based ground pounding half or quarter informed monkey come in here and tell you it’s all psychoacustic crap and all cables sound the same. The problems come when the bulk decides that it must overpower the peak of the given thing, as the bulk mass feels upset that they ’don’t get it’. like the peak of it has something against them and is denigrating them via simply being more capable and able. Not so. but they feel that way, so they go after the things they don’t know and can’t reach. It’s why intelligence and capacity generally hides. all due to the ego of humans. cables make a difference, and people can hear it reliably. Get over yourself and your limitations and stop beating up others because they can. Jebus. If you decide that you don’t hear a difference well, that’s fine too. or you can or might be able to train yourself to hear a difference. that 10,000 hours to master something idea. In the end, one might find that they can’t anyway and the effort was wasted. Additionally, to control for a set of variables you are learning on the fly and happen all together. how to sort a very very complex list of things you don’t know? Additionally...the problem comes in a bonus round form...in that hearing does not have a physically extant adjunct so those who can’t - call out those who can. this subject is so tired, that if I owned this forum, I’d have a period of banning people (week and then month long on the second offense, etc) who keep bringing it up, until the insistent finally take the hint and give it up. | ||
It all comes to quality of electrons. With music AC signal they simply eagerly oscillate, as Rodman99999 stated. Unfortunately with a little bit of DC present, they slowly drift toward the end of the cable (drift velocity) and "poof" they are gone. Your expensive electrons just got replaced by lazy generic variety :) | ||
@hilde45 - Back in March a thread about power cords and break/burn-in was started. I hate to type, so: I'm going to copy/paste some of my speculations. That a highly complex musical signal, MIGHT affect Poynting vectors and signal speeds, in interconnects, in a much more profound manner than a simple AC (ie: a fixed 60/50 Hz) signal, in a PC, seems likely (at least) to me. Further: all of the above and what I'll c/p (seems to me) lends credence to how the application of a stronger, DC voltage/field, outside a dielectric (ala Synergistic MPC and Audioquest DBS systems), might stabilize those vectors and signal speeds, PERHAPS eliminating some time smear and, "burn-in".
Happy listening!
| ||
It's an interesting topic to me. It's almost like discussing religion with someone you don't share beliefs with. Our experiences inform our opinion. If a cable produces a different perceived sound effect than another cable, and both cables measure perfectly according to standard practice, that creates a great deal of interest on my part, and a desire to better understand what is happening. The first thing I want to do is verify that I'm not experiencing a psychological effect from knowing things about the cable's cost and construction. When I've perceived distinct differences between cables I've found ways to listen without knowing for sure which cable I was listening to. To my utter astonishment the difference was no longer apparent when I did that, even though the setup hadn't changed at all, just my uncertainty about which way the selector switch was set. I've had similar experiences with equipment break in. On one occasion I bought two identical amplifiers and realized I had an opportunity to test break-in effects. I listened to both of them at the start. They both sounded the same. Then I used one for a month, listening for a few hours every night and running pink noise through load resisters for the rest of the time. So the amp ran 24 hours a day for a month straight. At the end I was sure the amp sounded better. I then plugged in the other amp that hadn't been used and it also sounded better in exactly the same way. That taught me what was really breaking in. I'm not insisting that these examples describe all the differences people perceive but I do think they represent something that is happening a lot of the time. Our sense of sound quality can be powerfully altered by means other than actually changing the sound. At least for some of us that is the case. I have yet to see any solid evidence that the standard accepted set of audio and electrical measurements are inadequate to account for perceived differences in sound quality, but I remain open to new discoveries. One thing that I feel is important is to compare measurements of a speaker's actual sound output when different devices are inserted into a system. There may be interactions between components that create unexpected issues. This is difficult or perhaps impossible to thoroughly test with all possible component configurations. I'd want to test specifically in configurations where a perceived benefit is noted. My suspicion is that it's not the most accurate and stable systems that reveal differences in components best, as is often suggested. I also suspect that there are intermittent issues, especially with digital signal paths, that can go undetected in a standard test bench procedure. Recently my friend got to hear distortion in my system that I hear once in a while. He's not an audiophile at all but when that distortion starts it's obvious. I have to reset the digital interface to make it go away. I suspect that more subtle intermittent distortions may also occur. |