I have been following (with much amusement) various threads about cables and tweaks where some claim "game changing improvements" and other claim "no difference". My take is that if you can hear a difference, there must be some difference. If a device or cable or whatever measures exactly the same it should sound exactly the same. So what are your opinions on what those differences might be and what are we NOT measuring that would define those differences?
The majority of perceived differences between cables and components are SUBTRACTIVE. And steady-state measurements can only measure ADDITIVE "distortions."
Not surprisingly components that measure best with steady-state signals are most likely the ones that subtract the most information.
If you measure using real music signals (into real loads under dynamic conditions) it is easy to see what has has been removed by the very design strategies that give good results using sine waves.
There is also the issue of loudness compression; which as far as I know is the number one reason audio does not sound like what was happening in front of the microphones and it is not measured at all.
Measurements have been getting better but they are still imperfect. Aggregate measurements of complex systems (the whole) are not necessarily fully reflective of the parts. One can measure down to component level and see differences which don't necessarily get reflected in the overall summative measurement. In addition, measuring dynamic phenomena in complex systems is even more complex e.g. weather forecasting and macroeconomic modelling (and reproducing music).
Is this about aligning measurements with certain auditory outcomes?
Measurements can indicate the performance relative to the parameter being measured but cannot (by themselves) accurately predict a subjective outcome, such as which cable (or electronics, or speakers, etc.) that somebody will like best.
My take is that if you can hear a difference, there must be some difference. If a device or cable or whatever measures exactly the same it should sound exactly the same.
Can you measure brain and soul? I believe you cannot even measure your ears fully.
Colours have shades too, they are not only come in red, blue, green, etc.
Do all people see the same colouring, do all people have the same sensitivity to light? I do not think so, no bias here.
But i do agree that it is a hobby so no big harm.
I would like to see a complete set of new measurement method by the people who do that, till then enjoy.
You mention cables, if 2 measure "exactly " the same then they will be indistinguishable in an ABX test. The reason people claim they hear differences in components that measure the same is due to confirmation bias.
Another possibility:
The new cable is different in length, gauge, or termination than the old cable. So it brings slightly higher gain to the system, which some users perceive as improved SQ.
I believe there are several missing parts here. One would be time. A measurement is a snapshot. You run a test tone through a circuit and measure what comes out the other end. To measure something like ‘space between instruments in a sound stage’, the relationships between snapshots in time is required.
The room boundaries - discussed often here - are important but not factored in when tying a meter to the end of the wire. Since no two rooms are identical, a change which may help in one room would be the detriment to another.
Another part - the human ear. This is the last stage in sound - a device at the end of every signal path that is never measured. If the mechanism used to hear a sound is not part of the measurement, what use is the measurement? Our ears may react to sound waves in such a way, with more or lease sensitivity, more or less elasticity, that some changes in electrical characteristics of sound are either attenuated or lost altogether. This is like a suspension system in a speaker - dulling out some changes and accentuating others. The human brain is a really good shelf. It is able to subconsciously shelve noises and frequencies in our environment to still hear changes in tone while filtering out fan noise or noise from lighting ballasts.
When we test fire alarm systems we do an audibility test. The recording which is played through the speakers is loaded into a hand held device. You walk throughout a space with the hand held and it compares what is being heard to what should be being played. The purpose is to determine if the words can be made out, but I think you get the idea. I consider that type of test to be closer to a real world test and you’ll find issues that cannot be identified by measuring the signal, ambient noise, or the speaker. I think the impossibility of doing the same in our listening rooms, with wires to the back sides of our eardrums, is why we reserve our judgement for a final listening test and put the results over any other test.
"The product measured 0.003% distortion. You cannot hear 0.003% distortion. The same pages waxes lyrical about a turntable that has 0.06% wow and flutter, that's 200 times higher?"
Back to math juniors Henry. That's 20 times higher. I note you put a question mark, so perhaps you weren't sure.
The most reliable method is to listen. BLIND. Repeated ABX testing is required. A consistent score of 95% or better indicates a valid distinction. All else is entirely invalid. PERIOD.
Blind listening proves if there is a change or not. Measurements are unnecessary - we are listening, not measuring. That removes any suggestion measurements do not measure everything.
On two different occasions, I've read articles by a very famous audiophile who claims LPs sound better than cds, who said something along the lines of, "I really liked how this xxx sounded but I haven't seen the measurements yet so I could have egg on my face." If you like how it sounds, measurements don't matter, but don't try and convince me that it's better than something else.
I figure subjectivists are like religious people and objectivists are the scientists. There is no proof that a new cable, silver fuse, etc improves the sound, but they believe it does As @djones51said, until you take vision out of any audio testing, there's going to be bias.
After treading through the various forum posts re cables for the various uses we apply them to, be it amp>speakers, source>pre, pre>amp, et all.....
It still seems to me that the 'better' one's equipment is, or is in one's perception of what is played in the environment that it is done in...
...that what one experiences is a very subtle form of eq.
One may purport that cable Q is superior in their instance, while for others they stink in relation to cable R...or F...or whatever.
Granted, I've not had the pleasure to experience personally such gratifications beyond the occasional 'listening sesh'...in an entirely different space with equipment I've no personal experience with to any great degree.
In short: If your boat floats better, have at it. Tell us about it; those who can indulge obviously may do so to whatever degree desired.
I've not heard every conceivable combination of equipment in one space that would allow for a critical opinion that would hold up under any and all scrutiny.
Not likely to, either. So it comes down to pleasing oneself to whatever level one desires to take it to.
If one wants to regard me as a nasty narrow-minded jade...I'm good with that.
Been called worse...mostly on the highway, when a Focus keeps showing up in front of your Porsche in the other lane you didn't take.... ;)
My opinion on this is the following: is there a difference between 2 cables at $100 vs. $1,000; obviously. Will ypu hear a difference, yes. How muxh of the difference, a very small percentage. Is it worth it? I dom't believe so. A system that cost $1k vs $10k will have poaitives and negatives. At the end, we're here to listen to good music. It comes down to personal taste and satisfaction. Some people who has disposable inxome will need to spend $100k on a sound system, and thats okay. I love to try new equipment to see if I can hear some differences.
Your concept is correct but you have to measure everything that matters and some things like frequency response and distortion are only part of the story. And these examples are essentially static measurements and music is dynamic not static. so even if you use only some measures, not all, at least use dynamic measurements like dynamic linearity which while not the entire story by far does correlate subjectively well to fidelity to the input
Not snarky at all. You asked what we are missing. We are missing the ability to measure sound quality. Until we figure that out, we will have to use our ears and become the best listeners possible.
just wondering if anyone has any speculation as to what measurements are missing.
Unfortunately, we don’t know what we don’t know. I’m pretty sure that within 10 years someone will come up with a way to measure distortion in an audio signal that is currently unknown to us.
Not protesting or judging at all, just wondering if anyone has any speculation as to what measurements are missing.
Now talk about snarky:
I just completed the work on a device that measures sound quality. I call it the SQascope. Send me your money, lots of it, and I’ll send one with directions to you in a plain brown wrapper and you can measure all your cables and the cables of your friends and neighbors. It’s exactly what you, as an objectivist, is missing.
A little silly question. We do whatever we like, the way we like. You do you, I do me. Simple. What’s the fuss.
One thing that objectivists are NOT missing is protesting. Too much protestations in the cyber space for some unexplainable reason. I always wondered why.
I just completed the work on a device that measures sound quality. I call it the SQascope. Send me your money, lots of it, and I’ll send one with directions to you in a plain brown wrapper and you can measure all your cables and the cables of your friends and neighbors. It’s exactly what you, as an objectivist, is missing.
The next person that can show by measurements how a power cord can affect the sound of an amp can qualify for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Until then the cheap stuff is good enough for me!
As far as cables go, I’ve never seen a graph of inductance, capacitance, impedance and the resulting phase shift and amplitude for a complete range of frequencies, input voltages and current draw. So, as a consumer, how do I objectively compare cables?
"The problem I have with this argument is that it believes our existing, common measurements are all that could tell us anything about sound. I do not believe this to be true, at all. Most of the measurements audiophiles are familiar with were developed 30 years ago or more. Yes, we can measure them with more precision, but their definitions haven’t changed."
Yes! This is my point exactly. I do not necessarily believe that the "common measurements" are all encompassing. What do you all suppose we may be missing that could explain differences? That is my question...
Totally agree with we do not know what or how to measure sound differences in certain cases.
I remember when CD players first came out and most everyone said they'll all sound the same. Yet when I audition several, it was clear most sounded different and a few sounded much better then others. I was told BS - you can't tell the difference. But I could. The issue was, no one had the understanding of what to measure. When they finally did (Jitter, etc.) then those disbelievers changed their tune. Oh you can measure it? Then it must be real now and I can hear it too.
My point, some of us can hear the difference between speaker wires, cables, fues, etc. some can't. I can tell the difference between zip cord and my Audience speaker wire. I cannot tell the different between power cables, but I have upgraded them from the thin, free, black ones. You can call me names for not hearing the difference and still buying them, but one day we'll be able to measure why they and other tweeks sound different and then all these na-sayers will jump on the bandwagon also.
Oh, it can be measured? Then it must be real now, wasn't real before..."
My take is that if you can hear a difference, there must be some difference.
In my case, yes, but in your case I have no idea, you could be fooling yourself. 😂
If a device or cable or whatever measures exactly the same it should sound exactly the same.
The problem I have with this argument is that it believes our existing, common measurements are all that could tell us anything about sound. I do not believe this to be true, at all. Most of the measurements audiophiles are familiar with were developed 30 years ago or more. Yes, we can measure them with more precision, but their definitions haven’t changed.
These measurements were made before high speed data collection was available and data retention and processing was a lot more expensive than it is today but unfortunately we have not really taken much of this into account in developing new measurements.
Let me give you a super simple example. Vibration control. AFAIK no one has a standardized measurement of the effects of sound on electronics but measurements and tests could be trivial.
Another kind of testing might be to measure the output at the speaker terminals with different speaker cable and compare the spectral and phase characteristics of the signal. Instead we have people spouting nonsense about theories of wave propagation through insulators that have absolutely no measurements behind them. Hell you should record it and put it in a youtube.
Before anyone asks me, I am not your lackey. I don’t get paid to do this kind of work, that’s for the magazines and gear makers to do. I’m just saying that overall the state of testing has stagnated 30 years ago and it’s a real shame.
This wasn't meant to be a troll post. I am completely serious.
whipsaw:
Very familiar with Nelson Pass and his take on this (I have a Pass Labs amplifier in my system and have read a bunch of his stuff). Even though he uses extensive listening tests, he can still measure the relative amounts of harmonics relative to different designs. So this is an example where you have a distinct difference in the perceived character of the sound but at the same time there is also a corresponding difference in the measurements.
So measurements alone may not predict which you may prefer, but there still exist a measured difference. I'm just curious as to what you all think we might not be measuring that would account for perceived massive differences in components which on the surface appear to measure identically.
Another incident related to this was when an audio technician with 50 years of experience told me that the hiss being produced by a pre-amp didn't register on his oscilloscope.
As is often suggested on these type of threads, measurements don't tell the whole story. This should be obvious, as if they did, every designer would base their designs on the best possible measurements, yet many don't.
That's not to say that they ignore distortion, etc., but rather that the best measurements don't necessarily equate to the most compelling listening experiences.
There are many examples, but Nelson Pass has shared more than a few interesting, related anecdotes and opinions. Here's a quote from an interview:
I like measurements, and I use them all the time, but they don’t get the last word. Generally, there isn’t much conflict between what we measure and what we like to hear. I’ve spent decades working to correlate good sound with measurements, and we have a reasonable picture of what works, and you see that in our products. These represent our own listening tastes, and appeal to a large enough portion of customers to keep us in business.
With low-order harmonics, there is agreement that low-order distortion is much less offensive than high-order harmonics and IM (Inter modulated) sidebands, and this drove the development of the Threshold 800A back in 1975, where the nature of the distortion was considered as important as the size of the “single number.”
By 1991 when I started Pass Labs, I began to focus more on the specific character of second and third harmonics, and slowly settled into a character where negative-phase second harmonic dominates at low levels, segueing into symmetric third harmonic at higher power. The second fosters an illusion of expanded space and localization, and the third seems to improve dynamics. The distortion of these amplifiers is still quite low, but they are not sterile.
I'm the one who posted Game Changing Tweak first in August of 2020 and in this forum titled Part 2. I consult with people whose knowledge in the audio field is towering. The audiophile who suggested I get an isolation transformer began his electronic career at age 16 and is now 78 years old. He solved a speaker problem for his friend, Dave Wilson, of Wilson Audio. He was also a friend of Walter Jung, author of Audio Ic Op-Amp Applications. He takes apart audio cartridges to modify them wearing magnifying goggles. Of course he can measure signal, but the final arbiter is his ears.
Exactly what the least reliable method is per this topic. Listening is purely subjective and brings the entire room, speakers, etc. into the picture. I am looking for possible measurable differences
Too many variables to measure. For instance the delay and “smearing” of the signal by micro capacitors set up at crystal boundaries in the wires. There is no way the track the electrons to see which are being retarded and to make sure there are no stragglers (single crystal wires attempt to minimize this). In addition to all sorts measures like resistance and capacitance, noise can be picked up… and all wires with electrons flowing through them create magnetic fields that effect other wires. It’s a complex mess… without even considering the components on either end.
If designing interconnects you measure what you can, insulate against noise and magnetic fields as best you can. Look at the mess behind your components! Real dedicated audiophiles put lots of space behind their components and carefully isolate and cross wires at 90 degrees for minimum interaction. Their systems sound notably better.
You mention cables, if 2 measure "exactly " the same then they will be indistinguishable in an ABX test. The reason people claim they hear differences in components that measure the same is due to confirmation bias. Take sight out of the equation and get back to us with how different they sound.
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