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.
@botrytis With that much anxiety I‘m wondering how you sleep at night. I know all about bias. I once was sure I had a kidney stone. The pain was real. I got an x-ray and as soon as the doctor told me I didn‘t have a kidney stone the pain was gone. No idea why the pain ever started. |
@tonywinga I have no anxiety at all. In fact, I have none. I was just saying much of what audiophiles actually hear is this bias. I care less what people spend their money on. |
Are you sure? Perhaps an ABX test is in order. Bias is what it is all about. Some people like the sound of speaker A and some speaker B. They both sound the same to my wife. She is all about looks. Looks factor into the bias even if the lights do not need to be on to listen. If the Nissan Cube were the only car available for sale I might just walk to the store. Just saw a video about the BIC ball point pen. It revolutionized writing. The video claims the BIC pen is responsible for increasing the world literacy rate from around 30% in 1950 when it became available to over 85% a couple of decades later. Over 120 billion BIC pens have been sold, they said. With such an appliance so sure and capable, why is any other style of ball point pen needed? |
@botrytis And much of it is not. So what? Do you eat blindfolded? In the end we buy what we like most all things considered, so who cares? While biases may be at play to some extent (and probably varies greatly by person BTW) they don’t necessarily undermine or overwhelm what we hear and do not invalidate the purchasing decision process. Saying people are biased seems pointless much like in the way those who say there are no differences between cables because they’re not proven with measurements, and both are useless and tiresome IMHO. |
