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

This type of thread can act as a warning to any newbie thinking about going down the audiophile path. The level of audiophile nervosa that can arise in a purely subjective paradigm is really something (virtually anything you do can be perceived as "changing the sound" so careful about touching anything in your system and don’t forget to hold your rosary beads!).


Audiophiles who talk like this about cables would have a heart attack (if they thought consistently about these things) watching the type of cables and how they are moved and strewn around in making the recordings they cherish.

Imagine if the pros believed all this stuff. "Hold on guys, Eddie just moved his cable, we have to hold off another day for recording until it settles again."

Yeesh.

I move my cables around all the time. ALL the time, because I’m often switching them between various speakers I own. Or merely re-adjusting them along the floor (they are in a fairly high traffic area in our house).   Does the sound ever change, the soundstage collapse, the sound get duller etc? No. Never.

But then I guess I haven’t spent the mega bucks on high end cables that can’t handle that type of abuse ;-)

mahgister

I dont understand that people use their intelligence to defend dogmas or attack dogmas...

I can understand being puzzled about defending dogmas.


But...criticizing dogma is a bad thing?

Whatever leads you to that conclusion?

Typically a dogma is: "a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true."

Do you think that’s a good thing? Is there any "authority" (especially in audio) that you know whose statements we must take as "incontrovertibly true?"

If not, why should you think that someone taking a dogmatic stance on an issue - audio or otherwise - means no intelligent person ought to analyze or critique that claim?


That sounds bizarre and unworkable. So...what point are you actually making, I"m wondering?

I dont have opinion or experience with the moves of cable and the changing sound...I respect equally those who have report positively about that and those who are not..The 2 opinions and experience are intriguing and interesting...

Cool. But then...who here do you think is defending dogma and what dogma would that be?

Moving cables and the affect it can have on your sound has been discussed for decades.

Sure: Among audiophiles, who have also discussed "for decades" the "sonic effects" of a vast amount of pseudo-scientific "effects" (often barely that). There is literally no pseudo-scientific idea that an audiophile hasn’t come up with, that didn’t have some portion of audiophiles saying "He’s right! I can hear the difference!" That’s because audiophiles generally don’t employ methods that control for their imagination.
That’s understandable to some degree due to practicalities involved, but many audiophiles go further to even deny the problem even exists.


Back to moving cables changing the sound: In the pro sound world, who use vastly more cables than audiophiles, no this does not come up. That is beyond using cables along well known parameters. I’ve recorded in, visited, and worked in many pro studios and not ONCE has this worry of "moving cables will change the sound" been either a problem or even raised as a problem. Because generally, there doesn’t seem to be good reason (beyond subjective audiophile hand-wringing and an appeal to golden ear hearing) to think it’s a problem.


If significant sonic changes occurred to cables simply because they were moving, guitarists would have had to stand statue still while performing on stage lest their sound keep altering. But they don’t do that, because they don’t have to. Guitarists (and other musicians) have used cables that writhe around on the stage or recording floor as they move and no engineers stress about "sound obviously changing" (even with unbalanced cables) due to "cables moving" (so long as the cables can stand the stress of movement, aren’t landing on power cables or whatever). Look at photos of Led Zeppelin or any other band performing. Look at the cables snaking all over the floor. The horror!


And when recording, engineers/musicians move cables around all the time and NO ONE  says "We’d better wait a few hours - or days - for the cables to "settle" again or we can’t get the sound right. That nonsense doesn’t fly in virtually any pro setting. It’s the provenance generally of hand-wringing subjectivist audiophiles, for good reason.

mahgister,

In the chaos of cables mess in a studio, all the subtle "cues" of the changing sound are lost, and cancelled constantly one another, minutes after minutes...A tangle knot of cables moving will maintain a general figure of sound that will not be disturbing, like ONE cable in a peculiar environment, where the same ears lived alone and attentive to the subtle details....And these " subtle" changes are not always measurable, and if they are, in some private room, it will be difficult to summon the expertise necessary to do it in the exact same condition at another times... Ok I will silence myself …. My best to all...

Well, that's a whole lot of conjecture or assertions.

Any actual evidence for them?  Do you have much experience actually working in pro sound?

Again...look at the type of claims being made for moving cables by the OP of drastic audio changes from moving a cable, including loss of bass, dynamics, highs.  You really think if this phenomenon were common that people recording/mixing in studios wouldn't have noticed?

A mixer/recordist works very intently on the sound he's getting, often changing little things for very subtle effects, be it microphones, mic positions, or adjusting EQ etc.  If a cable merely moving actually altered the highs/bass/dynamics to the significant degree claimed by the OP,  that would be heard!  It would necessitate for instance ADJUSTING EQ settings to compensate "damn, I'd spent all that time getting it sounding precisely how I wanted, but now the sound has changed and I have to start again!"

This DOES NOT HAPPEN (in any situation I've ever heard about) which is why it's the provenance of subjectivist audiophiles, but not professionals who spend their careers in sound.

In my daily job doing sound design I am adjusting mix levels and often EQ of many tracks combined (for a given movie scene I may have, say, 6 - 10 stereo tracks, and 12 mono tracks...sometimes many more! - that I'm carefully mixing so the addition of one sound *just barely* alters the whole combination.  I have to sometimes move cables and this never results in the sonic changes mentioned by the OP, or anything that changes the very careful, subtle mixing I achieved).  


Which is just what would be expected.  Unless the cables in question were insufficient for the job or somehow defective enough to screw up the sound if moved.  (Which is certainly an issue: rule one when having sound problems is usually "check your cables."  But that is for significantly audible defects brought on by some failure in the wiring, not the phenomenon claimed by the "cable lifers" here). 

In the workplace you describe, you’re just duplicating a product, not listening like you would at home. As long as it sounds OK and meets the standards, you can then can it and sell it.

nonoise, you’ve missed the point.

If moving a cable changed sound to the degree some audiophiles claim that would be a serious problem for live events. The OP talks about the sound becoming "horrible," bass and dynamics going away, highs losing live etc. If those sonic effects really arose from cables being moved around it would be HEARD and a real problem in the pro audio world.But it’s not. And not because pros don’t care about how things sound. Pros spend more time than most audiophiles on sound, and doing real field work/experimentation with what actually alters sound and to what degree.

Further, your response ignored my reference to studio settings, in which virtually no engineers worry about bass/dynamics/highs being seriously, audible degraded by having moved a cable. Engineers, mixers, recordists etc listen very critically to sound all day long, for sound quality. (I would defy most audiophiles here to identify, for instance, subtle frequency anomalies and how to ’fix them’ to precision a good mixer can provide).

If moving cables collapsed sound, made bass/dynamics etc go away this is something pros would NOTICE and CARE ABOUT. But they don’t bother with it because it’s essentially a non-issue.Audiophiles in their homes are of course free to imagine whatever they want :-)

mahgister,

I listen to your argument, and they are not neutral,

No argument is "neutral."  An argument defends a certain position.And "neutrality" is not a cognate for "reasonable."  If you take a "neutral" position between the claim of a flat or a round (oblate spheroid) earth, as if neither is more likely, you aren't doing much better than the flat-earther in terms of grappling with the evidence.


The question is whether the argument is reasonable/sound.

your agenda is dismissing any " audiophile claims" … Audiophiles are a crowd akin to anti-vaxing…Case closed... :)

No not all audiophile claims.  I tend to challenge the grounds for certain claims when there are good reasons for skepticism (And I give the reasons).  My "agenda" is trying to do this hobby while not being credulous in the face of every audiophile or audio-company's claim.  
If I find certain claims dubious, I'll explain why.
And I've never done so dogmatically.  I usually point out that it's not that I know the claimed phenomenon is false - it could be real - but rather I'm giving the reasons why I find the claim dubious or doubtful.   Good argument/evidence could get me to believe in the claim.



And I'm usually careful to distinguish the audiophiles I'm talking about, which are "those who believe in the phenomenon in question" and/or the purely subjectivist audiophiles who think their hearing is the ultimate authority on sonic reality,  and who reject the relevance of measurements, science etc in the discussion.

It is wrong to presume all audiophiles think that way. In fact, I see it as a problem that the purely subjectivist audiophiles seem to simply presume theirs is the correct approach and thus anyone entering an alternative opinion, skeptical of a subjectivist claim, is merely trolling or sticking their nose in where it doesn't belong.No!  Plenty of audiophiles do not go in for every type of tweak purely on subjectivists grounds, and they want better evidence than that.   There is a wide range of approaches to the hobby of hi-end audio, and the door ought to be left open not JUST for those who operate on the Golden Ear paradigm, but those who want to hold claims by manufacturers and audiophiles to more stringent standards before accepting claims.

I know perfectly well all there is to think about your vision of the world: astrology, anti-vaxers, audiophiles, crystals users, etc. all the same... Am I forget something ? oh yes, intelligent design, homeopathy, tarot reader,...the list is too way longer to make, but you know it is very easy to read your mind set...

How self-satisfying it clearly is for you to have pegged me so perfectly that you can dismiss my position without any actual arguments.

First, I don't think you could actually produce a cogent critique of my "mindset" based on what you've written.  I can see the seams of strawmen and over-simplification already in what you've written.


More important, all you've produced is a sort of snide ad hominem:  "You are so easy to read" instead of actually showing anything I've written to be unreasonable.

That's intellectually lazy and more in line with trolling.   Don't you care to contribute better than that?

No one's forcing you to participate.  But if you are going to, and think you can just drop in some ad hominem implications and job done, you should expect some pushback, right?

mahgister

Or thinking that no sane mind can affirm this idiocy, you will arrive at the right conclusion that is mine : it is a waste of time to attack dogmas, all the times, with some people....

Well, that’s confusing. Which is it? Is it a waste of time to attack dogma at all times? Or only with some people?


And why not with "some people?" Perhaps you mean that some people have such a dogmatic stance it is a "waste of time" to argue against their position because, being dogmatic, they won’t change their stance anyway.


But that is to ignore the existence of people who are not dogmatic about the issue under discussion, who could change their mind or amend their view based on the case made by either side.


If you have anti-vaxers dogmatically making false claims about the dangers of vaccines you don’t refrain from critiquing them because those people may be dogmatic. They are promulgating false ideas, and it helps to challenge false or poorly reasoned ideas for the benefit of others who might be influenced by those dogmatic claims.

Use your intelligence not to judge too swiftly...Use the context of a discussion to read something that can make sense out of your world...

Sure. But isn’t that precisely what we want? "Context?" Instead of one side being dogmatically presented, doesn’t presenting alternative positions about a claim provide MORE context from which we can "use our intelligence" to judge?  And yet, you seem to advise against producing alternative positions in the face of dogmatic statements.

Forgive me, but I find much of what you write on this to be incoherent.I’m not asking that you "argue," but it’s up to you if you can or wish to clarify.
Cheers.

rockrider

It is so sad that prof does not realize he sees himself as the incontrovertible authority.

It's sad that when faced with an alternative opinion some people can't be bothered to give reasons it's wrong, but will post strawman claim anyway so they can satisfy their desire diss someone without lifting a finger to justify it. 


Of course, you can't actually show anywhere that I"ve claimed to be an "incontrovertible authority" and it's inconvenient for your strawman that my argument to mahgister pointed out that it makes no sense to consider ANYONE an "incontrovertible authority" and why dogmatism of that sort is a bad thing.

mahgister,

My remark about your mind set is not a more ad hominem act than your assimilation of subjectivist audiophiles, who report something about cables, to the flat earther, and anti-vaxing crowd ...

Are you unaware of how a principle of reason can be often be defended by deliberately choosing extreme examples on the assumption that both parties agree on that example, hence establishing the principle?


As in, the parent to the child "You tried smoking because Eddie told you to?  WOULD YOU JUMP OFF A CLIFF IF EDDIE TOLD YOU TO?"


The extreme example is adduced not to show that two examples are the same, but that the PRINCIPLE applied to the two examples are the same.


That was my point about neutrality.  You seemed to imply that merely being "not neutral" amounted to some critique of my position.  My appeal to being "neutral" about flat or round earth was deliberately extreme so that you'd agree with the principle that "neutrality" is not in of itself some intrinsic virtue or indication of reasonableness.


Of course any argument has to be "neutral" in terms of not begging the question.  You can't assume X is the case but have to produce the argument for it being the case.


But beyond that, it's hard to see what point you could have been making about "not being neutral."

By the way an argument can be perfectly rational and sound and used in a non neutral way, motivated by an agenda. (examples abound: using Darwinian science facts in a political agenda etc).

Er...yes.  Of course.  That's perfectly compatible with what I already wrote about arguments themselves not being neutral.  Someone will have their motivations/reasons for defending a particular position.  The motivations can vary wildly among people.

That doesn't tell us whether the arguments are reasonable or sound or not, so...again...it's often hard to find your point.  How does any of that relate to audiophile claims?  Should no one make claims?  Should only one viewpoint (e.g. the purely subjectivist) be allowed to make claims?What is your actual point?

taras

it might have given some insight into why so many of the movies we see sound as bad as they do.

Indeed.  Perhaps a petition to the post production sound industry from audiophiles, as to how the pros ought to dress their cables, is the fix!

I see an opportunity there, taras ;-)