The Science of Cables
Do you mean in the old school reading of the term or the more moderne urbane use of the term ? And your honour, in my defense, this wordsmithing contest as you call it , addresses, though admittedly somewhat indirectly, questions about the state of mind of the other party and his motivations and thus is entirely relevant to the case at hand. |
@elizabeth You go on like you found THE ONE TRUE WHATEVER Well, he is talking about an idea that produces the most dramatic difference I have ever heard in the audio cables category. And which btw is definitely in the running, and may well be the winner, for the most dramatic difference for any audio category ( and frankly, I can't, at the moment, think of another difference making idea that is more dramatic and I have been playing in this sandbox for over 50 years and have seen lots of toys come and go ). So Doug has some very very good reason to sound wildly exuberant and zealous. Will be very interesting to see what your response will be once you have heard the difference this method makes ( and I'm assuming you will give this try at some point in the near future...I mean even with "lowest common denominator cable" in the most basic configuration, which uses splitters, this produces a much more than significant difference ). |
@glupson So far, jhills is in the lead. Wow, being in the lead in what is this thread’s equivalent of a Miss Congeniality contest is really not such a big whoop eh. But then I suppose given the way your team has been trashed wholesale here any win no matter how insignificant is good. There, I sincerely hope that after my terrible transgression above that this post gets this thread back on the rails again. |
@glupson So let me get this straight, cables are generally dismissed because they are perceived to produce only incremental differences across brands, and any differences are written off as just more marketing hyperbole that can’t be believed. But when some real performance differences are produced by innovative cable designs those claims are also dismissed as just more marketing hyperbole that can’t be believed. So the takeaway from this its all just more marketing hyperbole that can’t be believed all the time. And the funny thing this belief is maintained with a concurrent effort to actively ignore any possible evidence to the contrary even though such evidence is dead simple to access and really inexpensive to apply, Audio used to be exciting....with designers/builders producing innovative equipment that created the audio market and innovative buyers who explored any and all avenues to get better performance out of their systems. Now its reduced to a crowd of fundamentalist naysayers who just sit on their hands and decry any perceived threat to their entrenched beliefs. Whats that line about only dead fish go with the flow and don’t cause any waves, or is it boats or something...but youse get the idea ? OK, the conservative element in audio is doing what conservatives all think they are doing, and if the strict definition is applied they think they are preserving or conserving something ( like say the rule of some law ). Well, unfortunately in this case they are suffocating the spark that led to the creation of high end in the first place, and that spark is innovation which by its very nature breaks rules and preconceptions, or at least interpret in a wholly different manner ( just remember theory has two ways of being understood...its either something seemingly solid....or its just a theory, read a wild guess....and don't look now but the history of science is littered with the remains of solid theories that over time morphed into wild guesses...) |
Good point...but caveatically only if the cable strictly conforms to the established LCR standards ?....cause all that other weird stuff is not theoretically robust enough ?....which hopefully means we, as purveyors of really weird cable, will not be included in any upcoming class-action suit ( and you know it will happen because sooner or later some crazy guy will snap and grab a cable and perpetrate some crimes or something...)... Wondering, Geoff, is this part of that Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby prophecy ?.....sorta the end of times-ish like, which is weird cause I always thought that was a kid’s story and this is pretty dark....?.... Methinks maybe we should all go wireless like right now to prevent this eh ? ....and look Geoff is already there, wow more sheer Brilliance !... |
@glupson Cables may be dismissed as being capable of significant differences because they are, in essence and not in some very complicated "flowing lava"-kind of example, simple. At least in the minds of those suspicious ones. Well, a few things about the above...which seems a central pivot of your post. First it is not "flowing lava" is any way, shape, or form. Which is something that you could not say if you knew even the slightest thing about the eutectic alloy we use. And we all know the saw about talking about something we know little or nothing about, but I digress... Second, it is not at all simple, though it is typically expressed and "understood" in simplistic terms by folks such as yourself. And btw there is a considerable difference between simple and simplistic, a difference you may want to examine. And third, those aren't necessarily just suspicious minds though that is some small part of it, rather they are minds that are more correctly described as functionally most incurious, and very tightly closed . |
Not much of a stretch to say that functionally the cable haters/deniers club are saying much the same thing... "After all many people consider the whole cable pursuit unworthy because for them, the result isn't worth the cost" ....or maybe the idea that this audio thing was the result of moving the audio pile forward, common sense be damned, is now just a crazy idea that is becoming "a former member of the species" in this hobby...and this hobby is destined to be a calmed ship going nowhere...yet off in the distance is the call of the Schroeder Method yet that is being ignored or maligned or dismissed and in most of those cases quite smugly.... After all, many people consider the whole HEA pursuit unworthy because for them, the result isn't worth the cost. |
This from the Mogami site...where they are selling superior sound that apparently is somehow real special and superior...... Mogami has been the top choice for wiring professional recording studios for decades. Recording engineers have come to depend on Mogami’s superior sound quality, clarity, silent background, and consistent quality. Mogami is so widely used that if you have commercially recorded music, chances are overwhelmingly good that Mogami is part of the vital signal chain. But here we have better cable, also by Mogami, so is this stuff supposedly superiorestistical or something.... its the most neutral, dynamic cable made....read the most, as in nothing better....like mo bettah than anything even their own other simply superior stuff.... ( ...and please note this... superior itself is already an absolute superlative form ....so you can't have something like most or more superior...) What could be accomplished if sound quality was placed above all else but not at the expense of others? Mogami answered this challenge with cable we call Platinum, the most neutral, dynamic cable made. Like all Mogami cable, the sound emerges from a silent background, but with more dynamics, frequency extension and detail than anything before it. A larger diameter cable, Mogami Platinum is flexible enough for the most active performers yet rugged enough for road use with reasonable handling. It’s why so many of today’s top touring bands trust only Mogami Platinum. And always love the use of the term no compromise when a sentence or two earlier we see more economical....weird eh, no compromises but cheaper....like how is that even remotely possible.... Mogami Silver is genuine Mogami microphone and instrument cables built for more economical budgets than our Platinum and Gold assemblies. Despite having an attractive price, each Mogami silver cable is made without compromise to quality using top quality connectors. Every cable is hand assembled, then tested for performance before it leaves the assembly bench. Mogami Silver cables are backed by our no excuses lifetime warranty. Fortunately, with this level of quality you will probably never need it. Hmmm....don’t want to jump to conclusions but seems the emperor and his clothes parted company somewhere along the line....that being said these guys also sound a lot like heretics to me, so lads, should we go get some firewood, and wieners ?.... |
@douglas_schroeder or calling them unscientific. Were it to stop at that it would be understandable and reasonable, I mean, some folks, and rightfully so, do not share either the fundamentalist understanding of science that is a large part of the skeptic’s "intellectual" arsenal, or what it ultimately represents as a world-view. But words like foolish, stupid, gullible, and deaf are routinely tossed around when describing those who have committed the apparent sin of buying anything more than inexpensive entry level cables. But the fun doesn’t stop there, any manufacturer who dares step outside the carefully prescribed circle of cable righteousness is branded a liar, or a charlatan, or a snake-oil salesman, or a thief....Sweet, real sweet, and definitely not a strategy to develop some form of solution or understanding....no, its more like building a justification to burn witches at the stake. What’s funny is this level of vitriol is not routinely being used by the other camp in this, errr, discussion. |
Not to mention a very serious nomenclature failure on the cable end. Now I don’t want to jump to conclusions yet again but that sounds like maybe we’ve discovered a snake-oil spill that will make it very slippery for certain folks to get around cause their certainty has now got all uncertain like, like oil spills do that eh....hopefully science will save them. |
I really prefer most more much superioristical ...like it goes to 11 and beyond to explore new galaxies and universes and dimensions and so on and so forth, very trippy stuff eh...you know I’m thinking that Mogami is drawing on alien technology from Area 51, yup that is exactly what I’m thinking.... I mean what other explanation could there be....like the concept of most superior just can’t even be grammatically expressed in human language, ergo, alien...gee I wonder what of kind of spooky science those guys have... |
Wow !?.....really!?.....that is sooooooo cool !?....can I have your autograph?.....purty please....and for those keeping score please enter the preceding as a tongue in cheek joke.... And please note, over the last few decades I’ve been to several hundred studios, recording locations, and editing facilities....and the take-away?....the vast majority not only sucked, they sucked big time....even the ones in which highly regarded recordings were made....in fact most living rooms sound better, though admittedly they aren’t as pretty or impressive looking or loud...Just saying eh. |
File under just sayin’ eh. ...Bertrand Russell once said: “The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that the foolish are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” One part of which refers to real practitioners of science, the other to those who play scientists on the interwebs. |
And there is the example of Bob Ludwig, a master in the pro field and with much more than just a lick of audiophile in his method. . During a recent interview with mastering legend Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering for the 3rd edition of The Mastering Engineer’s Handbook, he mentioned that he rewired his entire studio with Transparent Cable and both he and his clients were astonished at the improvement in sound.
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@ razorbraun Had to think about it a bit, dredge up a lot of grad school era stuff, flip some things around, and turn other things inside out, but yeah that is pretty well sorta absolutely kinda bang on you nailed it.... And also is a great way to look at the why and how of chaos, or rather what our relatively simplistic math/analytical tools describe as chaos....and why it reefs our relatively simplistic math based theory thingees and why we humans can simply ride it out...or to paraphrase you, at base, life, writ large, is an art form... Damn that was good.......to loosely paraphrase my late dad, jeez your eyes are totally wide open....and then some pretty wicked extrapolations from your observations...wicked....just wicked.... |
In the reality that exists outside of the world that strictly lives by the primacy of LCR we have this very interesting development.....Kinda interesting that the term magic sneaks into the story ....so does this imply that MIT may have a Dept of Theoretical Snake Oil Physics or maybe a Department of Applied Physical Magic. Might have to press them to do some rigorous objective analysis like triple blind fold tests and other seriously rigoristical stuff, eh....you know just to keep them honest....I mean these guys are just leading edge scientists and all....and they may not yet understand that LCR explains absolutely everything about transmission of electricity thru cable thingees. https://www.quantamagazine.org/whats-the-magic-behind-graphenes-magic-angle-20190528/ |
@andy2 In regards transparency there is a great quote from the late Charley Hansen of Ayre electronics which unfortunately I can't find but roughly paraphrased goes something like this. Most people try to gain greater transparency by upping the intensity of the light ( in cable speak upping high frequencies which has been the standard method used for decades now to try to achieve some modicum of transparency ) we just clean the window ( or in cable speak drop the noise floor ) That can be most effectively achieved in a cable assembly by simply extending the bandwidth, either by use of a cable doubling, or the way TEO Audio does it which is using a liquid metal conductor. In both cases the cable generated noise generated by wave reflections due to impedance mismatches is reduced producing a cleaner window ( the analogy would be reducing room generated reflections and producing a room that is a more acoustically transparent musical setting ). One could, of course, also apply vibration control to clean the window by reducing the effects of micro-phonics but successful solutions along this path are harder to execute because standard vibration control protocols, while producing lower noise floors numbers, also produce phase shift which is something that slurs a signal and thus diminishes any transparency gains ( and the ear brain doesn't respond well/take kindly to phase shifts ). |
He also said that two cables with the same "RLC" measurements could have completely different sound.Sounds like that right there is a severely serious Class One case of bigly blasphemy. Methinks he will soon be answering to a cracked, errrr, crack team of inquisitors from the dreaded Cable Inquisition. |
@geoffkait Grammatically correct !? Gosh only correct ? Jeez more like Shakespearean in its depth and ability to address the human condition. A genuine tour-de-force type literary thingee. However on the logical end of things we do have some problems....to wit....how can one argue the supremacy of science and yet ascribe divine or supernatural intervention to the result by calling it miraculous. Don't know about youse guys but that kinda smacks of some level of adherence to religionositical thinking akin to blind faith. Like, definitely far away from objectivity and actually smack dab into wholesale subjectivity. Major whoopsie. So yeah, grammatically correct, but philosophically a definite face-plant. And it was so so close, like he almost got away clean, but for those 10 unfortunate keystrokes that scuppered an entry into the literary hall of fame. |
At first the line proffered up-thread Life= life + death didn’t make much sense, I mean it had some measure of gravitas and all but it didn’t seem to even do the equatee thingee right and I thought it maybe might have something to do with lower and upper case letters, like you know, Life being bigger than just plain life and death here just making up the remainder.....so after a rigourously rigourous analysis that drew on my vast understanding of all things arithmetic ( well at least to anything up to the number 10 cause after that I have to take my socks off and trust me we don’t want to go there ) I realized it also may mean that death could/would be 0 for the equation to work...which I suppose makes some kind of deep meta religious/physical sense....and is actually pretty deep, well for this thread anyway...jeez could be the start of a arithmetically based Newer Than New Testament or something big like a killer video game... OK, sorry for the interruption, carry on....me I’m going to have a nap, my brains hurts.... |
A Semiotician, Roland Barthes characterized the distinction between listening and hearing."Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act." We are always hearing, most of the time subconsciously. Listening is done by choice. It is the interpretative action taken by someone in order to understand and potentially make meaning of something they hear. Along with speaking, reading, and writing, listening is one of the "four skills" of language learning A distinction is often made between "intensive listening", in which learners attempt to listen with maximum accuracy to a relatively brief sequence of speech, and "extensive listening", in which learners listen to lengthy passages for general comprehension. While intensive listening may be more effective in terms of developing specific aspects of listening ability, extensive listening is more effective in building fluency and maintaining learner motivation. At issue is how to decide what a cable, or any other component for that matter, brings to the table. Science, and the instrumentation it uses, can do a passable job describing the hearing end of things, but when it comes to the more critical end of things, listening, it hits a bit of a brick wall because listening involves the brain, and the understanding of the brain is still a bit of mystery. And then there is the problem of folding motivation into the mix because the brain has an extraordinary ability to actively edit auditory input. |
