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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.

dwcda

Showing 2 responses by deep_333

deep_333
897 posts
 

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 po

 

This is extremely simple.

Step a)

Put blindfold on friend outside the music room (so he has no idea what is inside).

 

Step b)

When blindfold is on, hold his hand and waltz him to the seat, sit him down.

 

Step c)

Start swapping cables 25 times.

 

Step d)

- He's gonna hear the swapping sounds (as he sits blindfolded) while you swap away behind the gear. So, you can also "pretend swap" at times, i.e., unplug cables (give him the 'sound of swapping') and not swap, by plugging em back into the same sockets (tricky tricky 😑). 

 

If he gets it right, 23 out of 25 times it is a pass.

Otherwise, it's a fail.

How is this so complicated? It is very, very straightforward.

deep_333
897 posts
 

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.

 

@dwcda

Why the hell would i pain someone to swap every cable in the rig?? We do one cable at a time. For example, i passed the swaps 25/25 times between a SVS speaker cable and the AQ Thunderbird (not too long ago), both of which i own, etc.

@nonoise

You’re a hard grader. People are bombed based on "Confident" as there’s no way to be absolutely certain unless you can see the person you want to bomb.

Who said passing blindtests was easy? I only run blindtests on specific material i know very well. I subject to being the guinea pig with a couple of violin pieces i know very well. I am a hobbyist violin player of 40+ years and I don’t attempt blind tests on other material.

My friend’s a sax player (professional musician). I test him on his material that’s embedded all inside of him! The third guy’s an African artist (golden ear bat/professional musician) and there’s specific material he goes with, when he’s the subject. It’s only the 3 of us, we live close to each other and I don’t do it with others. These 2 cats have passed their respective tests with flying colors.

Having said that, I am fairly certain that the 3 of us might be pulling teeth on some tests, if the treatments in my room were taken away. Having a high resolution room is critical. The rigor and training a test subject may have went through in life (a specific instrument/sound) can matter a lot because these can be very subtle changes.

The cable denying hardliners (ASR types) may dismiss these 2 guys and myself as anomalies (treat us as datapoints that can be discarded), if we are 3 out of 50 test subjects, i suppose. If that’s the case, so be it...I don’t need to convince anyone of anything. All is well in the world.

 

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