2. cables
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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 jetter

jetter
3,084 posts
 

Seems like any non-audiophile that hears my system expects to be blown back into their chair by the bass.  That‘s what seems to matter.

It would seem they were disappointed because they were expecting a noticeably higher sound difference between your system as compared to what they have at home.

The analogy:

I imagine it is the same for televisions.  You could put an average 4k tv in a room with an ultra expensive TV.  I might see some difference, but the difference would not at all hinder my enjoyment of the programming.

But to a TV buff, the difference is monumental. 

jetter
3,084 posts
 

When properly carried out I can't imagine why anyone would be against blind testing. 

I remember a while back when Kevin Deal performed a blind tests on, too lazy to look it up, either integrateds or power amps.  As memory serves, all attending thought the exercise was excellent.

I know that the only real way to get to know a component is to live with it, but if someone else is willing to go thought the effort of performing the test why not consider it one more pertinent data point?

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