Moving cables around killed dynamics for days anyone else experience this?

audiozenology:

The evidence does not support your position. Trained listeners of no particular experience or skill, other than no hearing defects, are better able to detect differences than untrained listeners and though they want to think they are, most audiophiles are not trained listeners. One of the more successful training methods is rapid A/B switching to illustrate differences, something many audiophiles refuse to participate in.

In my experience, the people certain audiophiles make fun of, the ones you claim "can't hear", the "propeller heads", who have far more actual diverse experience with a variety of systems, not only can "hear", but understand far better what they are hearing and are much more likely to point out an issue if one exists. But feel free to keep believing what you want to believe. I know I am willing to test my claims day in and day out, but can others say the same?

Nassim Taleb:

What's a IYI?

Intellectual Yet Idiot: semi-erudite bureaucrat who thinks he is an erudite; pathologizes others for doing things he doesn't understand not realizing it is his understanding that may be limited; imparts normative ideas to others: thinks people should act according to their best interests *and* he knows their interests, particularly if they are uneducated "red necks" or English non-crisp-vowel class.

We report. You decide.

Informed. The word you were looking for. 

The History article about the gold standard is like all the others correct in the confiscation, the bank closures, and subsequent revaluation from $20.67 to $35. What it leaves out, what these sorts of articles always do is spread the narrative rather than inform. The truth they would tell if the article was truly intended to inform is the revaluation artificially inflated the money supply and devalued everyone's savings by over 60%. They don't tell you this because that would be saying the truth, that inflation is theft. 

Informed. Totally the word you were looking for.

Trump + USA = Russia West

You know what’s hilarious about this? The implied "threat" of making the US more like Russia. Russia, where anyone can buy their pharmaceuticals without a doctors permission, health care is good and cheap, taxes are low, everyone has a month off every year, and the country is out of debt and instead has actual physical gold instead of paper receipts in its vaults. The people aren’t afraid to talk politics because they’re grown ups and nobody gets called racist over a political disagreement. This last one is what really frightens you to your bones, people being unafraid to speak the truth. Yes, nonoise, yes indeed Trump is taking us there. Deal with it.

No, he blew it. His comment applies to re-routing cables. Of course we know all that. But the question is why disturbing them matters when they go back to where they were. He's talking about routing and spacing, when the question has nothing to do with that.

btw his tip is wrong too. The only way to know if its fine is to try and see if there's something better. Knowing it will sound worse for a while until it settles in.

But why does it need to settle in? That is the question.

Interesting. 
Thanks!

When people with such experience in audio like Nelson Pass, Rob Watts talk about measurements and correlation between SQ and measurements I respect their opinion.
But how many people with such knowledge experience in audio are exist?

Yeah. And how many like Stan Ricker?

One year at CES they're having some kind of problem with the PA. Well not really what most would even call a problem. From where I was standing way in back it sounded like a perfectly normal PA. But some people up closer and near the middle were complaining. 

Frantic running around on stage. Frantic checking of connections. Some old guy yells out something about a cap, or resistor. I forget. Couldn't hear from where I was anyway. Not the point.

Point is it was some small part in some random PA system causing a "problem" so small most weren't even aware of it, and yet some guy in the audience knew what part and he knew this just by listening.

If anyone reading this was there please chime in because as I recall the news swept through the crowd to where in no time even guys like me standing way in back knew it was Stan Ricker who heard and knew with his ears exactly what was wrong and how to fix it.

And they did what he said and all was well.

So look, its not like anyone is saying measurements don't matter AT ALL or aren't worth doing AT ALL. Is just that in the final analysis the measurements are secondary to the human experience. 

It's been my experience that those who hear a difference don't usually cite scientific findings to explain what they hear as they trust their ears.

Bingo!

That's why science exists in the first place, to explain human experience. Human experience does not exist to explain science. The people who think otherwise have it exactly backwards. They are deeply, deeply confused.

With that being said, the first time this question was presented to me was at RMAF 7 (?) years ago when synergistic research was doing a demo on the sound quality of a particular set-up before and after the powercord for the amp was twisted and moved around.  It was very easy to tell a degradation in sound after the power cord was disconnected, twisted up and placed back in the system.

Perfect! Because it was moving a Synergistic Master Coupler that brought this to my attention back around 1994. I had two of them at the time and was curious to see if one sounded better than the other. So I swapped them. And sure enough the "new" one sounded worse. (It wasn't really new, had just been used somewhere else.) 

But then when the first one went back in it also sounded worse!

Then while I was sitting there listening and puzzling over what had happened a few minutes went by and I was quite sure it no longer sounded as bad. So swapped back. Same thing. 

This again was a long time ago. So much experience since then its now taken for granted any moving around at all will have an affect. The more violent the moving, the worse it is and the longer it takes getting back its equilibrium.

The frequently wrong audiozenology writes:

I have yet to have someone show me to be "frequently wrong". 
I stick to claim that I can support with evidence based in research, science, and engineering.

Oh, really? Same guy:

My "intuition" does not suggest otherwise.
What seems to escape some people is the holes in their own knowledge and ability. 
there is no difference between "pseudointellectual" and "intellectual"

and my favorite:

I am not "average", I am Superhuman!! My words have far more value than anyone else's!

Well, all righty then.

The question is, why are a certain groups of people so threatened by me?

Wrong again. Not threatened. Annoyed.

It gets tedious having to set the record straight like this, but I guess as long as the hearing impaired keep trotting out the same old same old then its only fair to keep skewering their lame stories. To wit:

Your brain becomes "accustomed" to your system, essentially trying to, at some level, correct the frequency response to what feels right.

Yes, the old "your" when they mean "their". This is the writer admitting HE can’t hear. Never argue when someone tells you they can’t hear. I totally believe this guy cannot hear. You should too. We all should.

Technical term is neural adaptation.

If you say so.

It is real, and you ignore it at your peril.

Stop. You’re scaring me. Stop. Please.

You will frequently hear real acoustics experts discuss this.

Yes. Well its a first for me. But if you say so. You go, girl!

It is a learning process so it does not happen instantly.

I see. Just a minute... taking notes...

(There are other processes that occur more "real time" as well). You can both "learn" and forget ... hence when you come back to your "new" system after not listening for a week, things are magically better .... bass response is back, soundstage seems more "normal", dynamics are right. It is probably still not "perfect", but listen more and things fall into place (to a point).

Wow. So when you haven’t heard it in a while you forget what you learned so when you hear it again you have to learn it all over again but this time it happens instantly because, magic. Fascinating.

Moving cables, if it makes any difference at all, is going to make difference at only the finest details,
uh huh
and things like dynamics, perceived bass response, soundstage, are not fine details, they are macro properties.

Wait- what? Soundstage is macro? Words fail me. Well, words that wouldn’t get this post removed, anyway.

If you continue believing that simply moving cables (with the exception of significant electrical interference) is going to significantly impact your system to the level you describe, then you are going to have a hard time ever being really happy.

Yeah well and if you’re gonna continue making stuff up instead of reading you’re never gonna understand. Nobody is saying we "believe" what we are saying is WE HEAR! "WE" hear. Not you. I’m perfectly content to accept that when you say you can’t hear you know what you’re talking about. You can’t hear! There. Happy? You can’t hear. Yes. I’m quite sure of it. You’ve convinced me.

Congratulations. You win.

Except, well, one small thing. I just spent a couple hours listening after pasting TC all over my panel and it just keeps sounding better and better and tonight I am happier than ever.

This I think is what they mean by you can’t win for losing.

OP: I’m glad to hear some people tend to experience this problem, I believe and respect others do not hear it. The issue is I know personally I experience total loss of bloom, bass, spl or energizing of the room or what ever you would like to call it. All cables are many years old and fully broken in, ranging from JPS, Acoustic Zen, XLO Sig. and Harmonic Technology, so solid core, silver and copper.

millercarbon:

Yes handling cables ruins sound quality. Usually very short term, minutes to hours, but it all depends on the handling and the time.

Let me expand on that. There’s a sort of sound quality performance curve that as far as I can tell pretty much everything goes through. But its cyclical and fractal nature combined with not everyone being that great listeners, and more often than not psychologically disinclined as well, its not a thing a lot have picked up on. So let me explain.

You got one very long term cycle, which is performance from new to anywhere from a month or more of steady use. This cycle is big and obvious and bad enough many manufacturers spend time and money burning in before shipping. Even so, everyone knows to expect some time in use before full performance. Once burned in this cycle hits almost a plateau. Almost because long enough out of use and it restarts all over again. But it was a long time peaking, and its a long time going back. Cyclical, see?

Then there’s a much shorter term cycle, the one that happens every night if you turn your stuff off- or even if you don’t. If you do then you get the warm-up phase which can be minutes to hours or even days depending on your particular component. This is why so many SS components should just be left on all the time.

But even left on all the time there’s still the nightly cycle of sounding better and better as the night goes along, until dawn, and it starts to get crappy again, the whole cycle starting all over again that night.

Sorry if people think this is bunk. Or that its just more of the usual mindless repetition of blather heard or read or whatever. Its none of that. This is all stuff I noticed all by myself, same as the OP with his cables. Only I've had a lot more time to think about it. Like 30 years more time.

The one cycle that’s different is cables. Because unlike everything else they can be put off by just wiggling them around. If you could get inside your amp and wiggle all the wires around bet it would do just the same. Wires is wires.

Anyway, same as above. Slight brief wiggling, slight brief cycle reset. If you even are able to notice. Major moving around, coiling and storing and wriggling back into position, expect a major cycle reset.

One thing mentioned is cleaning connections is something I haven’t done in a year or so.

Yeah well you are way overdue then. Mine must have been cleaned fifty times and at least a dozen different ways over the years which is how I know you are overdue. You could at this point wipe with ordinary alcohol and cloth and hear a big improvement. In fact you should try something just like that just to see for yourself.

Right now I am working on doing a thorough review and evaluation of Perfect Path Solutions Total Contact. TC has been around for a while but its gone through different editions and it seems no one yet has given this anywhere near the quality level review it deserves. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

If some believe removing cables need time to recover sonicly how can you judge adding or subtracting cables to improve things when the benefits or down falls take a few days to hear.

Well its true, and it isn’t. Its true because, well one time Definitive let me audition a Linn phono stage, but only overnight. So I get home and of course its cold and sounds like crap. Even after a couple hours, pure crap. They wanted it back by 9AM and I almost boxed it right up but decided to leave it on overnight. Next day, it was like a completely different animal. Not for me, but at least now I could understand how it might be, for someone.

But it isn’t true, because a) that’s rare and b) its hours not months and c) its a known known. I know it happens. Even better, I know the fundamental character of the component always comes through even right out of the box.

Its natural to be asking questions because this is all mind-blowing and new right now. I can still recall, though back when I went through it there wasn’t even an internet to find anyone to share it with. There was like, one guy, literally one guy. Why there are still all these years later people wandering around pretending these things aren’t happening, playing their own little part in preventing what should be common knowledge from becoming common, that to me is the real question.

I've been experimenting with different cables between components. Nothing sounds right since trying to improve sound with new mix of cables. There is no bass and boring, highs are okay but life is gone from system. So I flipped everything back the way it was still sound horrible. Ran everything 24/7 for a couple days still no go. Let it run a couple more days dynamics are back and bass is full big and has tone again and enjoyable to listen to. Can someone tell me why this happens. I've also moved just speaker cables around without unhooking them and seen this happen, I don't get it.

Yes handling cables ruins sound quality. Usually very short term, minutes to hours, but it all depends on the handling and the time. Always try and disturb them as little as possible. Just jostling a cable a bit reaching around it is probably not something you'll ever notice. Removing it, rolling it up, stuffing it in a drawer, pulling it out a week later, that is more like what you heard and it can be awful and take a while to burn in again.

This is not BS. The time Caelin (Shunyata) came over he got grief from some audiophiles for handling his cables so carefully. They assumed he was being pretentious. He was just being careful. At a listening party with 20 people and only a few minutes per thing the last thing you want is all they hear is crap because you ruined it with your clumsy handling. Which evidently a lot of audiophiles routinely do.

This like everything else is something everyone can test very simply so there is no reason to go making a fool of yourself on the inter web, just go and listen. Its easy but its not simple. It does require thinking. Mostly you need to think and break it down into all the little things that are going on. Well maybe not all but at least the ones we know about.

So first there's the connection. Plugging and unplugging. This all by itself makes a difference. But don't take my word for it try it and see for yourself. Unplug and plug back in. One end at a time and move the rest as little as possible. 

Before the electrical contact had been established and burned in. Now it seems to be back in the same place but on a microscopic level its completely different than before. On a microscopic level all kinds of micro-arcs are zapping with the music, only now all different pathways. So there's that.

Then there's the cable itself, a combination of conductors and insulators. For this one use both hands and go end to end bending one section at a time back and forth. Do not unplug, just wiggle it enough to simulate removing and reinstalling only without unplugging. This will mess up the sound much more than the unplugging. Try it and see.

So whatever it is probably is more to do with the conductor/insulator relationship than the contacts. 

This is not me saying why. This is me saying this is something you can learn to figure out for yourself. If the scientific method teaches us anything its that science isn't something scientists do, science is something all of us can do. Its also something we can screw up at, but not it would seem any worse than the scientists themselves. So have at it!

So good job paulcreed, for listening and paying attention. Given that you heard and reported what you heard the way you did there's little doubt you will hear the rest.