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I see the issue with ABX blind testing

I’ve followed many of the cable discussions over the years with interest. I’ve never tested cables & compared the sound other than when I bought an LFD amp & the vendor said that it was best paired with the LFD power cord. That was $450 US and he offered to ship it to me to try & if I didn’t notice a difference I could send it back. I got it, tried it & sent it back. To me there was no difference at all.

Fast forward to today & I have a new system & the issue of cables arises again. I have Mogami cables made by Take Five Audio in Canada. The speaker wire are Mogami 3104, XLRs are Mogami 2549 & the power cords are Powerline 10 with Furutech connectors. All cables are quite well made and I’ve been using them for about 5 years. The vendor that sold me the new equipment insisted that I needed "better" cables and sent along some Transparent Super speaker & XLR cables to try. If I like them I can pay for them.

In every discussion about cables the question is always asked, why don’t you do an ABX blind test? So I was figuring out how I’d do that. I know the reason few do it. It’s not easy to accomplish. I have no problem having a friend come over & swap cables without telling me what he’s done, whether he swapped any at all etc. But from what I can see the benefit, if there is one, will be most noticeable system wide. In other words, just switching one power cable the way I did before won’t be sufficient for you to tell a difference... again, assuming there is one. So I need my friend to swap power cables for my amp/preamp & streamer, XLR cables from my streamer to my preamp, preamp to amp & speakers cables. That takes a good 5-10 minutes. There is no way my brain is retaining what I previously heard and then comparing it to what I currently hear.

The alternative is to connect all of the new cables, listen for a week or so & then switch back & see if you feel you’re missing anything. But then your brain takes over & your biases will have as much impact as any potential change in sound quality.

So I’m stumped as to how to proceed.

A photo of my new setup. McIntosh MC462, C2700, Pure Fidelity Harmony TT, Lumin T3 & Sonus Faber Amati G5 & Gravis V speakers.

dwcda
zlone
410 posts
 

I agree that ABX testing sounds good on the surface but is not very practical. Thanks in part to @soix , I followed a similar path, starting with Zen speaker cables. My system is now at a level where I can hear the difference in a new cable immediately, but they also change over a period of days such that a quick ABX test is not sufficient to get a true feel for the cable. 
 

FWIW, I had the exact same speaker cables you have, they are okay, but with a system like yours, throw some Satori’s in there and see. And move the sub, but that is a separate issue. 

botrytis
173 posts
 

I am sorry that blind testing is so hard. I mean, that is how drugs, etc. are tested. Yes, it would take some planning but can be done. After all the Boston Audio Society did it with amplifiers in the 1980's. It can be done.

Just remember, our brains only a small amount of heard information, when doing comparisons.

This is why most dealers, tell you what you are hearing, play it the piece, tell you again, and then play it again. They are reinforcing that information in your brain.

asctim
435 posts
 

I think it would help if you knew what the cable did to the signal, in technical terms. If you could measure that, it may be possible to derive a test signal that accentuates the difference. I know this won’t tell you if you actually like the sound better or not on real music, but it will allow you to determine at least that you can actually hear a difference. I know they can do this for absolute polarity. A properly made test signal will make the difference quickly apparent for most listeners, while with regular music it can be very difficult for most of us to tell. It’s a nice thing that our hearing is generally quite forgiving of small differences. I call it subconscious auto correct. 

I’ll now offer an anecdotal tale. I had a customer measure the clarity of his bass after he made some adjustments to his room and system. I analyzed a bunch of his measurements and they all were very good, with one setup being slightly better than the rest. He then told me that a DIY power cord he’d made for his subwoofers seemed to improve clarity, so I asked him to make comparison measurements with and without the new power cord. Guess what? The clarity measured higher! Now it could be just a random result. We’d have to control all factors very carefully to be sure the change was a result of the power cord. But it does suggest that measurements can demonstrate these differences if someone is willing to take them.

roadcykler
83 posts
 

If cables do change the sound (they don't) it would be audible by changing any one of them. Swap out the amp power cable with a different one would make a difference were it true.

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
4,254 posts
 

 

roadcykler

76 posts

 

If cables do change the sound (they don't) it would be audible by changing any one of them. Swap out the amp power cable with a different one would make a difference were it true.

Were you a Mel Gibson double in Forever Young and they just thawed you out?

In all my years in this hobby I only ran into a scenario where two different cables sounded almost alike once. I had to really struggle to hear any difference. In was Zavfino Arcadia and some low end neotech. This was an RCA link between Sutherland 20/20 phono amp and Pass XP22 preamp. Both cables were cheap low end stuff that sounded ok - music was played by my system just fine. 
 

Not counting that instance, every time I swapped cables I heard a difference. Further more if I rotate the existing power cords in my set up from amps to digital and from digital to amps I can hear a difference. The result isn’t always good though. No blind test required. 

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