why do people feel the need to buy expensive cable
I have tried expensive cables and one's moderately priced. I would say there were some differences but I can't actually say the expensive cables were better. IMHO I believe a lot of people buy expensive cables because they don't actual trust their ears and are afraid of making a mistake. They figure the expensive cables are better for the fact they cost more. If you have a difference of opinion or share the same thoughts, I would like to hear about it.
No, Elizabeth, THANK YOU for adding your $.02 of bloviation. We "freaking idiots" certainly couldn't bloviate very well without your consummate leadership and blithering/bloviating expertise. Most forum rules strongly urge participants to address the issues presented while avoiding personal attacks. I guess that only applies to us "freaking idiots" and not esteemed forum "leaders" like you. Carry on....
Elizabeth: I can tell you are frustrated with this discussion; but I would suggest instead of resorting to referring to us as "freakin' idiots,” you instead, if it pains you so, click on the "unfollow" button on the top right hand corner of this page. It is such a simple and quick remedy.
To the two gentlemen who posted just above: I believe that you may have misinterpreted Elizabeth’s post. The way I read it she was simply saying that the only thing any of the thread’s participants have become convinced of during the course of the thread is (in some cases) that some of the other participants are "freaking idiots." That is a fair statement IMO, and is of course very different than if **she** had been alleging that any of the participants are freaking idiots.
Elizabeth, sorry to disappoint but convincing anyone of anything is not the point of this thread. We are all trying to help Geoff reach 10,000 posts so he can take a break. I secretly suspect taters is a secret agent (or at least a lobbyist) for the aftermarket fuse manufacturers with a mission to get audiophiles to stop spending their money on expensive cables so they have more to spend on fancy fuses. Fuse threads can be found behind doors No$. 149, 175, and 225 across the hall from the True Believers Kool-Aid stand.
taters starts many discussions for the kick of getting people to argue. He almost never responds to his own posts. Just look at his many, many posts!!! This post was for his own amusement.
I haven't read through this thread, so forgive me if someone has already mentioned that Galen Gareis of Belden Cable has been writing some articles for Copper, PS Audio's free online magazine. I'm finding them well worth the time it's taking me to read them.
cj1965 "I have a full bench of spectrum
analyzers, signal generators, multi trace scopes, and a very reliable
Earthworks mic that I use on a daily basis. Digital technology exploded a
lot of myths. Now that it is fairly cheap and accessible, only those
who actively choose to bury their heads in the sand will succumb to
foolish arguments involving so called "audible improvements" that can't
be measured or tested for. My microphone can pick up low frequency
grumbling of a truck approaching a quarter mile away and display it on
my software recording dashboard about 20 seconds before it's loud enough
for me ti audibly detect. I see evidence of this every day and don't
needs anyone's "veils have been lifted" hype to tell me if there's a
difference. And no neither NASA nor the BBB are necessary. All that's
needed is a little common sense and a mind that's open to accept science
and the scientific method."
Being that you have such an
extensive stable of testing equipment and also the considerable
expertise to commit such equipment to the rigors of scientific testing and apply the results to the body of data about audio why don't you share with us the results of that testing? Being that you see "evidence every day" of what you call audio myths this should be an undertaking that will only require of a you a very brief committment of time and energy and it will also form the foundation of proof/ legal action you can take against those you consider to be frauds in the audio industry.
bdp24 I haven’t read through this thread, so forgive me if someone has already mentioned that Galen Gareis of Belden Cable has been writing some articles for Copper, PS Audio’s free online magazine. I’m finding them well worth the time it’s taking me to read them.
>>>>See my comments on the Cable Snake Oil Antidote thread.
Dynaquest, let me re-phrase Elizabeth's statement that I referred to and perhaps that will clarify the interpretation I was attempting to provide in my previous post.
Elizabeth said:
So far ZERO people have ’changed sides’, or been convince about
anything, (except too many other people are just freaking idiots).
My interpretation:
So far ZERO participants have changed sides, or been convinced about
anything, except that some participants have become convinced that other participants are just freaking idiots.
If that interpretation is correct, obviously she was not "referring to us as 'freakin' idiots,'” as you stated in your response and as CJ1965 implied in his response.
Cables do matter but they are also the biggest scam in high end audio. I am supposed to believe that it requires $3000 to produce a 1m interconnect with no moving parts? Maybe there are rare materials that require such a cost but there is scant science to back up the exaggerated claims of both the makers of such cables and the rather absurd claims that buyers report hearing.I do love reading the flowery reviews as they are extremely entertaining.
Get a good pair of balanced cables from Mogami and be content in the knowledge paying 100x the price will offer little more than a smaller checking account. As a wise philosopher once said- "Mundus vult decipi."
drjsmd Cables do matter but they are also the biggest scam in high end audio. I am supposed to believe that it requires $3000 to produce a 1m interconnect with no moving parts? Maybe there are rare materials that require such a cost but there is scant science to back up the exaggerated claims of both the makers of such cables and the rather absurd claims that buyers report hearing.I do love reading the flowery reviews as they are extremely entertaining.
>>>>It would probably be helpful to your argument to post some of the alleged scant science and exaggerated claims of manufacturers and customers with some sort of evidence. Something. Otherwise you really don’t have a leg to stand on. By the way, my advice to you is don’t read any reviews of the $24,000 interconnects as you might risk a brain aneurysm. 🧠
For those who want more information, from well known electronics engineer Douglas Self: http://www.douglas-self.com/ampins/pseudo/subjectv.htm With quite a bit of bibliography for those keen to enlarge their knowledge.
I’m always in awe of anyone who knows the limits of my perception. Gosh, does that Mr. Self dude have like, ESP or something? I’m guessing a little but here but Mr. Self isn’t on board the Tweak Train, is he? 🚂 Toot, toot!
So far ZERO people have ’changed sides’, which I agree with. But I do think the discussion (or argument) has its merits. People who are new to the better audio world, and are not set in their ways, may find the information helpful, but also confusing. Hopefully, this will lead them to trust their ears and not someone else in the buying decision.
Mr Self does not need ESP. He has a first class honours degree in engineering from Cambridge University (i.e the top 10% of his year) and then psychoacoustics at Sussex University. For years he worked with audio legend Peter Baxandall and a number of well known electronics manufacturers. He holds a number of patents on electronics design and is the author of a classic book on amplifier design. Geoff I cannot help it if you have never heard of him. This is what he wrote on the directionality of cables:
"Cables are directional, and pass audio better in one direction
than the other."
Audio signals are AC. Cables cannot be directional any more
than 2 + 2 can equal 5. Anyone prepared to believe this nonsense
won't be capable of designing amplifiers, so there seems no point
in further comment.
willemj, why are you arguing against your own star witness? You quoted him as stating cables are directional. Did you misquote him or are you just confused? 😳
The quotation marks are his, to define the position he wants to argue against. His own view comes with the words Audio signals are AC..... I am afraid I created some confusion. What I should have writen is: against the view that cables are directional, Douglas Self answers '
Anyone prepared to believe this nonsense
won't be capable of designing amplifiers, so there seems no point
in further comment.'
@willemj Exactly! That’s why it’s an Appeal to Authority. Anybody can round up some expert somewhere who will support your position, no matter what your position happens to be. See, you guys learn something everyday. Even what’s his name knows what an Appeal to Authority is, which frankly is kind of shocking. 😛 Maybe you can find an Einstein quote. It nice that you admire or worship those who agree with you. 🙄
Definition of an Expert. Someone who use to be a drip under pressure.
I have much more expense in my ICs, PCs, and speaker wires then in my electronics. I have all High Fidelity Cables having gone from their initial CT-1 ($1600 for 1 m.) and up to their Pro ($18,900 for 1 m.). Yes, that is right, almost 12 times as much!! I also had an interconnect of their Elite series. It was better than the Pro, especial its bass, but enough is enough! And the Elite weighs 154 pounds in a 6 inch diameter and 37 inches long! Where would I put these?
So where did this investment in cables get me. I should say that other components including my amp, line stage, phono stage, dac, turntable, music server, and grounding unit, also greatly contributed to my sound. But my speakers are invisible and the speaker end of my room is replaced by a three dimensional sound stage with instruments with all harmonics and finger sounds playing them and singers who breath and turn their heads. And all of these have precise locations on stages.
My only regret is that I am 79 and only now have this music with its realism and thrill.
"But my speakers are invisible and the speaker end of my room is replaced by a three dimensional sound stage with instruments with all harmonics and finger sounds playing them and singers who breath and turn their heads. And all of these have precise locations on stages."
Hmmm....mine sounds like that I I have MonoPrice, free Kimbers and six WireWorld RCA connects I bought for 10 bucks.
Good link to a knowledgeable person. However you don’t need any degrees or specialized training to know that “special audio cables” are and always will be a scam.
The reason cables get promoted here over real improvememts is the profit margins are huge and years of effort have gone in to brain washing audiofools to become faithful acolytes. The true benefits of special wires are HUGE in $$$$$ of profit and some self satisfaction from the proud owners - a pity they do absolutely nothing for the audio except what people choose to imagine they can hear.
We often see this sort of thing, you know, people who are over educated in certain areas but who can’t see the forest for the trees. Since I actually didn’t read any of Mr. Self’s Cable screed what exactly was his reason for saying cables aren’t directional? Or was it some sort of gut feeling?
Hey, ain’t nothin’ wrong with being obsessed with good sound. Let’s take a hypothetical case, shall we? OK, now I’m not expecting anyone to believe there can be 100% improvement to sound quality with only one tweak. Even though I personally have experienced that one more than one occasion. But to avoided putting anyone off too much or possibly causing a brain aneurysm in any die hard Skeptics let’s take it a little slower. Suppose you have five tweaks and your system is not all messed up and can actually hear the effects of all five tweaks. For the purposes of argument let’s say the five tweaks are 2 Blue Fuses, the new Graphene Contact Enhancer (applied to only interconnects and the Blue Fuses), a Green Pen for coloring the outer edge of CDs and finally, a spring based isolation system for speakers. OK, that’s five.
Then as each tweak is applied, we ascribe a percentage improvement to each tweak. So for each Blue Fuse let’s say, for the purpose of argument that there is a 15% SQ improvement. Not too high, not too low, right? That’s 30% for both fuses together. Next up, the graphene contact enhancer applied to the Blue Fuses and interconnects only. That should be another 30% SQ improvement at least, you know, being a little conservative. That’s a total of 60%.
Next up, the Green Pen. Now normally I’d estimate the Green Pen about 5-10% SQ improvement but since we’ve just improved the SQ by 60% th Green Pen should score higher, being more powerful now that you can hear the effect easier. So let’s say the Green Pen improves SQ by 20%, fair enough? Now we’re up to a total of 80% since we first started.
Isolating the speakers should produce even greater results since the speaker vibration will not be allowed to migrate to the electonics. So isolating the speakers, especially after we’ve used four tweaks already, should score, what, 30%?
Thus, with five tweaks, conservatively speaking, we’ve managed to improve the sound quality 110%. Pretty good for an afternoon’s work, eh?
@willemj - with an attitude like that you will never advance in this hobby. Remember the Little Engine that Could? I think I can, I think I can, I think I can! 🚂 Toot, toot!
Hey lets move this discussion out of the realm of audio, with all of those conspiracy theorists that are just trying to get you to spend money for obvious fullfery that no one can hear, obvious self hypnosis.
Lets look at steaks they all taste the same right? So your $11 Diner steak, is going to taste the same as a well aged Wegu Steak from Japan, or a well aged steak at $50 from Peter Lugars right. after all a steak is just a piece of cut up meat, therefore, they should all taste the same.
How about performance tires on a Porsche? A tire is just some steel belts encased in a rubber shell, so a $800 Pirelli P Z is going to perform the same way as a $200 Hankook on that Porsche right? Rolling resitance, or handling between two tires shouldn’t make a difference at speed right?
Or how about a bottle of ripple at $5 a gallon vs a fine $20 bottle of wine vs a $2,000.00 bottle? They will all taste the same right?
Lets draw that analogy into the relm of science, pour all three wines into a gass chromatograph and see what the readout says, H20, some organic compounds, a gass chromatograph can’t discern what tastes good, so the measurements theory is now thrown out the window, and how much differnence is the statisticual data when all three samples should be identical.
Shakespere summed it up perfectly, "there is more in heaven and earth then in your philosophy."
Sometimes experential data is the most helpful and relevant of all.
Civilization has advanced over the last few centuries by applying rigorous standards to distinguish between nonsense and truth. Some audiophiles and their obscurantist merchants like yourself (I originally meant Geoff, but it seems Audiotroy wants to join that crowd) have worked hard to stop that progress in the world of audio.
Well, in advanced economies we have had a roughly 2% per capita growth of income over the last century or more, even though world population has increased enormously. We have more than doubled life expectancy, we have eradicated many chronic diseases, and we have increased levels of education enormously, just to mention a few metrics. And whereas the benefits of all this were originally limited to Western Europe and the US, this pattern is now extending more and more all over the globe.
All true. And yet we still have some of the highest income inequality among developed nations. Life expectancy has gone up for those making over $150,000 and remains stagnant for those who make under that amount. More people are rejecting vaccines. Health care is still viewed as a commodity and not a necessity. Science is being roundly rejected by a large portion of our country. Voodoo and superstition are being forced into some curriculum and claimed to be just as valid as the science being rejected.
It seems that for that for every two forward steps we take, some take one step, if not more, backwards. We are a curious people.
Inequality is indeed on the increase everywhere, and that is not good news for the mass of the population or for growth prospects.
Even if you have Even if you need I don't mean to stare We don't have to breed We could plant a house We could build a tree I don't even care We could have all three
So I disconnected all of my power cords and replaced them with the stock cords. I didn't tell my wife what I did, but asked her to listen to a couple of her favorite songs. Her reaction, what happened to the bass, his voice sounds dead, it doesn't sound good, what did you do? Hearing improvements makes one a believer.
Once in a great while I bother to read some of the drivel in the forums. I can truthfully say that I have never found anything useful here. Willemj has a point. Years ago while I was at IIT in Chicago I majored briefly in Electrical Engineering. I did so only briefly as EE thought that knowing how to make a circuit that worked meant that further science to make a circuit that sounded better was irrelevant.
Shortly after that I went back to physics. EEs don't engage in science; they forsake it saying they know everything. I have a friend who is self taught and who has solved the problem of some frequencies getting through amplification faster than others. He has a focus control that makes everything else sound broken. I won't list his name as he will not bother with 1950s scientists.
"[Nature] ... never says "Yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases
it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an
experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if
it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will someday
experience its "No"—most theories, soon after conception."
Albert Einstein
The quote is in an article in Forbes titled "Scientific Proof Is a Myth". The main premise of the article is that "nothing in science can ever truly be proven. It's
always subject to revision."
OK, boys and girls, what time is it? It’s time for a little, What the heck is happening to science these days? Taken from Zen and the Art of Debunkery. Enjoy. Italics provided by your humble scribe.
Seeing with humility, curiosity and fresh eyes was once the main point of science. But today it is often a different story. As the scientific enterprise has been bent toward exploitation, institutionalization, hyperspecialization and new orthodoxy, it has increasingly preoccupied itself with disconnected facts in a psychological, social and ecological vacuum. So disconnected has official science become from the greater scheme of things, that it tends to deny or disregard entire domains of reality and to satisfy itself with reducing all of life and consciousness to a dead physics.
As the millennium turns, science seems in many ways to be treading the weary path of the religions it presumed to replace. Where free, dispassionate inquiry once reigned, emotions now run high in the defense of a fundamentalized "scientific truth." As anomalies mount up beneath a sea of denial, defenders of the Faith and the Kingdom cling with increasing self-righteousness to the hull of a sinking paradigm. Faced with provocative evidence of things undreamt of in their philosophy, many otherwise mature scientists revert to a kind of skeptical infantilism characterized by blind faith in the absoluteness of the familiar. Small wonder, then, that so many promising fields of inquiry remain shrouded in superstition, ignorance, denial, disinformation, taboo . . . and debunkery.
"[Nature] ... never says "Yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will someday experience its "No"—most theories, soon after conception."
Albert Einstein
>>>>As fate would have it in this hobby when a test proves negative it actually doesn’t mean “No.” It means “Maybe” because maybe the test was flawed and we’ll have to have someone else take a crack at it. And if the results are positive it probably means YES to the theory, though prudence dictates we get some more postive results on board for good measure. Any test is only one data point. Apologies to Albert.
The quote is in an article in Forbes titled "Scientific Proof Is a Myth". The main premise of the article is that "nothing in science can ever truly be proven. It's always subject to revision."
Tell me all that you know I'll show you Snow and rain
Actually there are many things in Science that are not (rpt not) subject to revision. The absolute constant of the speed of light in a vacuum, the mass of an electron, all elements have exactly the same composition everywhere in the universe, the universe is expanding forever, the physical characteristics of a black hole have been known with absolute certainty since the 1960s, the hypotenuse of a right triangle given the other two sides is never in doubt, the equivalence of energy and mass (E= Mc2), all electromagnetic waves are comprised of photons, and all manufactured wire is directional.
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