@dwcda so what are you hearing with the transparent cables in your system? Any conclusions?
I see the issue with ABX blind testing
I’ve followed many of the cable discussions over the years with interest. I’ve never tested cables & compared the sound other than when I bought an LFD amp & the vendor said that it was best paired with the LFD power cord. That was $450 US and he offered to ship it to me to try & if I didn’t notice a difference I could send it back. I got it, tried it & sent it back. To me there was no difference at all.
Fast forward to today & I have a new system & the issue of cables arises again. I have Mogami cables made by Take Five Audio in Canada. The speaker wire are Mogami 3104, XLRs are Mogami 2549 & the power cords are Powerline 10 with Furutech connectors. All cables are quite well made and I’ve been using them for about 5 years. The vendor that sold me the new equipment insisted that I needed "better" cables and sent along some Transparent Super speaker & XLR cables to try. If I like them I can pay for them.
In every discussion about cables the question is always asked, why don’t you do an ABX blind test? So I was figuring out how I’d do that. I know the reason few do it. It’s not easy to accomplish. I have no problem having a friend come over & swap cables without telling me what he’s done, whether he swapped any at all etc. But from what I can see the benefit, if there is one, will be most noticeable system wide. In other words, just switching one power cable the way I did before won’t be sufficient for you to tell a difference... again, assuming there is one. So I need my friend to swap power cables for my amp/preamp & streamer, XLR cables from my streamer to my preamp, preamp to amp & speakers cables. That takes a good 5-10 minutes. There is no way my brain is retaining what I previously heard and then comparing it to what I currently hear.
The alternative is to connect all of the new cables, listen for a week or so & then switch back & see if you feel you’re missing anything. But then your brain takes over & your biases will have as much impact as any potential change in sound quality.
So I’m stumped as to how to proceed.
A photo of my new setup. McIntosh MC462, C2700, Pure Fidelity Harmony TT, Lumin T3 & Sonus Faber Amati G5 & Gravis V speakers.
Showing 35 responses by audphile1
@donavabdear I’m completely fine with what you believe in. It makes no difference to me. My observation from many of your posts is that you don’t see the forest for the trees. You’re deep in the weeds without being able to expand your comprehension beyond the boundaries of the recording studio. There’s probably not a chance that this will ever change. No point evolving this conversation any further. Take care. |
@dwcda few things…
At least move the sub out of there for the cable evaluation and lay down a rug If you don’t hear the difference then you don’t hear the difference. It could be due to room acoustics, the cables really don’t sound any different or your hearing is not trained enough to hear it. |
@soix your arguments are falling on deaf ears. |
Were you a Mel Gibson double in Forever Young and they just thawed you out? In all my years in this hobby I only ran into a scenario where two different cables sounded almost alike once. I had to really struggle to hear any difference. In was Zavfino Arcadia and some low end neotech. This was an RCA link between Sutherland 20/20 phono amp and Pass XP22 preamp. Both cables were cheap low end stuff that sounded ok - music was played by my system just fine. Not counting that instance, every time I swapped cables I heard a difference. Further more if I rotate the existing power cords in my set up from amps to digital and from digital to amps I can hear a difference. The result isn’t always good though. No blind test required. |
another invalid use case. And another reason why blind testing doesn’t work in audio. Aside from sound preferences being highly personal so I wouldn’t care what my buddies think is the best sound if it isn’t the best sound to me, you’re polling people who aren’t familiar with one’s system and who aren’t even audiophiles. Experience shows when we’re having discussions like this and clearly a lot of people out there lack it. If you need blind testing or your buddies to tell you which cables sound best, don’t waste your time and money. Just get a system that plays music and enjoy it. Don’t burden yourself.
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@tonywinga lmao |
@dwcda good approach! As I said earlier, quick AB is not the greatest way to do it. How you’re approaching it is the right way. So what model transparent? |
Super! Should be a decent improvement over the Mogami. Good luck! And keep us posted. |
@dwcda well that’s great news! Confirm your findings and move on. $18,000 can easily be spent on an amazing improvement in room acoustics and components. Enjoy the music! |
I mentioned this in one of my posts earlier in this thread if you recall. Even if you will hear a difference is it worth it to you. But then you stated you thought you heard an improvement and when you switched back to Mogami you realized it’s all the same. No difference. Not a thing. Cable evaluations can only be concluded -
There’s also another category that flat out deny there could be a difference without even trying anything. This is the give me scientific evidence, blind test, measurements crowd. In either case, it make absolutely no sense to argue and try to convince anyone. As I said earlier, the arguments fall on deaf ears. OP - your room acoustics when addressed will be a better ROI than cables, in the current state of your system. Revisit cables after if you still feel the need to explore. |
I think my current Nordost Tyr 2 XLR cables are defective then because they image and stage better than the mogami and several other cables that I used in the past.
In the recording studio, may be. However, audio reproduction at home is an echo system consisting of components, speakers, room, listener and even cables. It is a complex blend of many factors that affect imaging and soundstage. A change of a speaker toe in angle will make it or break it. None of us have a reference of how it was intended. We weren’t there. Your thought process, @donavabdear , is flawed in many ways. Including your belief that canare and mogami if used in the studio are good enough for home audio. If I use gruyere cheese and black truffle butter on my burgers and McDonalds doesn’t, are my burgers defective? |
Oh you absolutely have to expand your culinary horizons @mahgister LOL |
Neighbor blind test is the ultimate one of them all. You get the true ABX blind test using non audiophiles who are not familiar with your system. There ain’t no chance in this world that there would be any difference identified between cables. |
Professional musicians can easily identify differences between the sound of different violins but they’re not trained to identify differences between cables. It takes commitment, years of swapping components, cables and working on room acoustics to dial your system in and train your ears in the process to get all pieces of the puzzle to the level where differences between components and cables are easily discernible. Exposure to live music is priceless to build a reference (not talking about a Metallica concert here which is nearly impossible to replicate at home). Once it all comes together, add the recording quality to this equation and when all stars align you can, if you have the ears to do so, not only identify differences between cables, but also identify the differences between a Strad and a Guarneri, a Yamaha and a Steinway or a Kawai. It’s not impossible in a context of a properly set up system and room with trained and capable hearing listening to a high quality recording. |
@benanders I respect that you remain respectfully doubtful. |
this further solidifies what I said above. So here’s the rub…I do not need my entire zip code to hear the changes in my system and nod their heads in approval before I finalize any purchase be it cables, streamers, dacs, etc. The only element that matters to me is what I hear and how much of an improvement there is. There were multiple instances where I had sent cables back. Cables that I had actually high hopes for they just didn’t work out. The change was so negative that I couldn’t endure listening to my system for more than few minutes before getting severe fatigue. These were high priced cables and no, they were not defective. And this, my friend, is where the discussion ends. Please let me know when you get around to trying some cables as an experiment in a comfort of your home and system, and what you had heard.
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@benanders that whole sentence sums up your stance on this matter. I literally took nothing out of context. I don’t know what you mean by “behavior”. |
I think @botrytis is mixing up spirit competition where a panel of judges is used to taste and score a product with what takes place in a distillery, where only one person, a master distiller , is responsible for taste and consistency of the final product. If there was a panel blind tasting whiskey at a distillery it would resemble this thread. When it comes to my system, I’m that master distiller. Why are we still entertaining this endless flow of skeptics? |
@botrytis that’s awesome! Have a nice day! |
@nonoise …
They really picked the cream of the crop here. This comparison is equivalent of comparing Mogami, BlueJeans, Benchmark StarQuad, bottom of the line Audioquest and some other garbage on that level. Like all these blind test aficionados, they only select and include all similarly bad quality garbage that no one can pick apart. Balantine’s 17. Johnnie Walker Black. Once again this is why all these blind tests are 🐂 💩. |