• Please note that Audiokarma will be offline briefly for updates early on Monday morning, September 28th.

Mains cables...

restorer-john said:
Taking on the Captain? Way, way over your head E-Stat. Let it go in the interests of peace and goodwill towards men.

We all know how silly cable discussions always end- two sides, one rooted in facts, testing and engineering, the other side true believers. No man's land in the middle. Trench warfare where everyone loses.:)
Click to expand...


Which side is which? If 2 products measure the same, they sound the same don't they? One can be ss and the other valves but they measure the same so they have to sound the same. Are you trying to bullshit people into believing that boutique cables are not designed by engineers? Explain scientifically your findings please because 2 products can test the same and not sound the same. Maybe we're not measuring correctly to identify the differences. Have you thought about that? We may just be scratching the surface scientifically. You paint a distorted picture of scientific procedure and facts that are incomplete as we still struggle to explain why 2 cables, amps or speakers with the same specs do not sound the same.

From your pedestal, when you look down on the''believers'' take another look, there are scientists, engineers, reputed manufacturers that work to get better products to the consumer. They are not snake oil salesmen (they do exist on both sides). Be happy with your zip cord and go back to that era where ignorance was bliss. You don't have to believe that some people are trying to push the envelope but please don't talk for the scientific community. There are smart people on both sides of the argument but if you like cheap a/c outlets, cheap cables and cheap audio, good for you. You must be on the side of the true believers because the world has developed in the past 50 years, 1969 is way back in the rear view mirror! Many engineers would sneer at your comments!
 
Never once has a professor changed a wrong answer to a right answer just because I "believed" it was right. On occasion I've demonstrated I was right, and the correct answer became my answer, but that was very rare on only on homework for which I had the time to take great care to lay out the solution in great detail so as to earn as much partial credit as I could if the ultimate answer was wrong. But I never went into his office and pleaded with him that I "believed" I was right. I can't speak for the profession of boutique cable engineering, which in many cases seems to be strictly black smithing a product to take the visual form of something dreamed up by marketing.
 
dogscanskate said:
Which side is which? If 2 products measure the same, they sound the same don't they? One can be ss and the other valves but they measure the same so they have to sound the same. Are you trying to bullshit people into believing that boutique cables are not designed by engineers? Explain scientifically your findings please because 2 products can test the same and not sound the same. Maybe we're not measuring correctly to identify the differences. Have you thought about that? We may just be scratching the surface scientifically. You paint a distorted picture of scientific procedure and facts that are incomplete as we still struggle to explain why 2 cables, amps or speakers with the same specs do not sound the same.

From your pedestal, when you look down on the''believers'' take another look, there are scientists, engineers, reputed manufacturers that work to get better products to the consumer. They are not snake oil salesmen (they do exist on both sides). Be happy with your zip cord and go back to that era where ignorance was bliss. You don't have to believe that some people are trying to push the envelope but please don't talk for the scientific community. There are smart people on both sides of the argument but if you like cheap a/c outlets, cheap cables and cheap audio, good for you. You must be on the side of the true believers because the world has developed in the past 50 years, 1969 is way back in the rear view mirror! Many engineers would sneer at your comments!
Click to expand...

Wow, cheap bullcrap shot after another. Many straw men were murdered in your post.
 
loopstick said:
Never once has a professor changed a wrong answer to a right answer just because I "believed" it was right. On occasion I've demonstrated I was right, and the correct answer became my answer, but that was very rare on only on homework for which I had the time to take great care to lay out the solution in great detail so as to earn as much partial credit as I could if the ultimate answer was wrong. But I never went into his office and pleaded with him that I "believed" I was right. I can't speak for the profession of boutique cable engineering, which in many cases seems to be strictly black smithing a product to take the visual form of something dreamed up by marketing.
Click to expand...
I just gotta say, the first three sentences brought back college days for me... and how I survived! :rflmao:
 
I think we can all agree, cables do make a difference... in your bank account balance.
 
Bodyblue said:
Wow, cheap bullcrap shot after another. Many straw men were murdered in your post.
Click to expand...

I stand by what I say. I get tired of the bullying tactics. Trying to smear a person that has different opinions is wrong. Guess who gets all these cable threads closed? Science works both ways, let him prove his stance with scientific data. It really doesn't matter where you or I stand on this issue but the discourse used by some is downright insulting to members of this community.

If you believe that cables don't sound any different, that's your opinion and I respect it but just don't force me to believe you, prove it! Don't try to bully me through humiliation, I will defend my opinions and if I'm proven wrong, I will apologize. Until it is proven that cables sound the same 100% of the time, I will believe that strides have and are being made in the cable industry. Call it bullcrap all you like but ever since AK's appearance on the web, these guys have killed 100% of them without ever bringing any evidence to prove their affirmations.

We can disagree respectfully but this type of bullying has to stop. Affirming your status and trying to humiliate a member whose opinion differs from yours is wrong! Why post to diminish others? I would defend everyone's right to give his/her opinion on any given subject. Enough of these bullies that kill threads for no good reasons.
 
dogscanskate said:
I stand by what I say. I get tired of the bullying tactics. Trying to smear a person that has different opinions is wrong. Guess who gets all these cable threads closed? Science works both ways, let him prove his stance with scientific data. It really doesn't matter where you or I stand on this issue but the discourse used by some is downright insulting to members of this community.

If you believe that cables don't sound any different, that's your opinion and I respect it but just don't force me to believe you, prove it! Don't try to bully me through humiliation, I will defend my opinions and if I'm proven wrong, I will apologize. Until it is proven that cables sound the same 100% of the time, I will believe that strides have and are being made in the cable industry. Call it bullcrap all you like but ever since AK's appearance on the web, these guys have killed 100% of them without ever bringing any evidence to prove their affirmations.

We can disagree respectfully but this type of bullying has to stop. Affirming your status and trying to humiliate a member whose opinion differs from yours is wrong! Why post to diminish others? I would defend everyone's right to give his/her opinion on any given subject. Enough of these bullies that kill threads for no good reasons.
Click to expand...
I'm not taking sides in the cables do or don't make a difference, but I don't understand the logic behind what I've put in bold. The way it's worded, it's simply impossible. How can a test prove any two (or more) things sound the same? Would double-blind testing work to prove it? I just can't come up with a scenario where this can be proven. What can be proven, or what should be able to be proven, is that two (or more) cables sound different, if they indeed do. It's like you thinking two cars look alike. You can say they both are dark blue and have four doors. That doesn't prove they look the same.
 
I'm not taking sides either. The argument that has always been used in cable threads has always been if you think they sound different, prove it. This tactic works on both sides of the equation. I love when people defend their opinions with passion but to be fair to any discussion, whatever your stance is, you just can't say gibberish like engineers and test/data belong to one side while the others are ''believers'' without fact. It is not lopsided like that. There is research that has been going on for ages in cable designs for many applications and not all of it is snake oil as many want to believe.

To answer your points, all I want is if you know for a fact that cables should sound the same, share your facts and make them repeatable 100% of the time. If I want to explore the world of cables, why should I be taunted and mocked? I've never said that people who don't agree with me are ''believers'' of a pipe dream that the scientific community and tests/data have shown that I tell the truth. Facts, testing and engineering without the documentation can also be called snake oil. Can we just respect other people's opinion even if it doesn't coincide with ours?

All cables have data sheets and to replicate listening tests (such as double blind tests) would be extremely difficult to establish a standard for such a test. Who qualifies, how do you pick candidates, their limits, age, gender... it is very complicated and time consuming and costly. Cables may just be a personal choice.
 
I read this thread and many others on cables over the years. Since I have an engineering back ground I think you can figure out where I stand on this issue.
That said, I was in the market for a high quality IEC power cable for a new piece of gear that I purchased. I would have probably just made one up from scratch but I picked up one yesterday for less than the cost of the wire/plugs.
It's nice and thick (about 1/2 inch in diameter) with molded plugs on the end. Molded plugs means that it has the wires crimped to the prongs instead of being held by screws, a much better connection. It's shielded as well.
Since the new piece of gear has a max draw of 6.25A this should suit me well.
Still doesn't make me a believer in cables but for 3 bucks at the flea market I have a Monster Powerline 200 power cable ready to use.
Actually looks to be of decent quality, no bling except the gold plated prongs but I like that.

BillWojo
 
BillWojo said:
That said, I was in the market for a high quality IEC power cable for a new piece of gear that I purchased. I would have probably just made one up from scratch but I picked up one yesterday for less than the cost of the wire/plugs.
It's nice and thick (about 1/2 inch in diameter) with molded plugs on the end. Molded plugs means that it has the wires crimped to the prongs instead of being held by screws, a much better connection. It's shielded as well.
Since the new piece of gear has a max draw of 6.25A this should suit me well.
Click to expand...


The stock 'free' ones PS Audio would send with a new purchase are, maybe were, made that way... Nice power cables

Sorta maybe wanted to try their upper end ones because of those 'free' ones - havent yet
 
Here's the problem with the "I Believe What I Hear" mindset. Let's assume that basic engineering principles and methods were honestly and effectively applied to the design and development of audiophile mains cables. Let's also assume that even if you used the most advanced test equipment you could still not detect any difference in performance - you could only "hear" it. In this case design validation becomes a statistical exercise. And what do you put on the spec sheet? Over four sigmas of critical listeners agree that these cables are really really good? Do you really want to experiment with your wallet to see what this might mean to you?
 
dogscanskate said:
I'm not taking sides either. The argument that has always been used in cable threads has always been if you think they sound different, prove it. This tactic works on both sides of the equation. I love when people defend their opinions with passion but to be fair to any discussion, whatever your stance is, you just can't say gibberish like engineers and test/data belong to one side while the others are ''believers'' without fact. It is not lopsided like that. There is research that has been going on for ages in cable designs for many applications and not all of it is snake oil as many want to believe.

To answer your points, all I want is if you know for a fact that cables should sound the same, share your facts and make them repeatable 100% of the time. If I want to explore the world of cables, why should I be taunted and mocked? I've never said that people who don't agree with me are ''believers'' of a pipe dream that the scientific community and tests/data have shown that I tell the truth. Facts, testing and engineering without the documentation can also be called snake oil. Can we just respect other people's opinion even if it doesn't coincide with ours?

All cables have data sheets and to replicate listening tests (such as double blind tests) would be extremely difficult to establish a standard for such a test. Who qualifies, how do you pick candidates, their limits, age, gender... it is very complicated and time consuming and costly. Cables may just be a personal choice.
Click to expand...

That's how logic works, and for good reason. The burden of proof is on the positive assertion which, in this case, is that there is a difference which we don't know how to quantify. The reason that logic works that way, is that it is impossible to prove that every single cable that has ever been or ever will be invented is the same, which is why your request that it be demonstrated is unreasonable. Instead, there is only a need to demonstrate that a single cable can be shown to demonstrate an audible but otherwise unmeasurable difference. That's still a hard challenge, but it's within the realm of possibility.
 
Will S. said:
That's how logic works, and for good reason. The burden of proof is on the positive assertion which, in this case, is that there is a difference which we don't know how to quantify. The reason that logic works that way, is that it is impossible to prove that every single cable that has ever been or ever will be invented is the same, which is why your request that it be demonstrated is unreasonable. Instead, there is only a need to demonstrate that a single cable can be shown to demonstrate an audible but otherwise unmeasurable difference. That's still a hard challenge, but it's within the realm of possibility.
Click to expand...

The OP asked if there was a difference between power cables listed at different prices for probably the same length. Whoever answers the question has the onus of proving it whether they believe or not in sonic differences. The way I see it is that the burden of proof rests on both sides. Should there ever be an audible difference that can be heard but not measured, we simply are not measuring it correctly or we haven't developed the correct measuring instrument yet. Through 12 pages, nobody has been able to prove anything yet, we may not have the necessary equipment to do so (at least for me).

I'm not into esoteric cables and I keep a huge amount of skepticism when I see or read claims that are utter nonsense. I do believe there are some honest people who are trying to make better products through technological advances. In 2005 science told us Pluto was the largest planet and in 2006, photos showed it to be a dwarf planet. Science evolves and there is nothing wrong with keeping an open mind about such subjects.
 
Let's say I'm a dog food engineer. I want to design a dog food that tastes better. I can't measure that directly. I have to set up an experiment. It's basically an experiment that measures group behavior. I can't rely on the behavior of a single dog. I need a statistically suitable number of dogs. Enough dogs so that behaviors related to taste can emerge from the distribution, and behaviors unrelated to taste fall into the noise. Do engineers who design boutique mains cables go through these rigors? They're faced with the same challenge - how to test a design goal that can't be directly measured.
 
dogscanskate said:
In 2005 science told us Pluto was the largest planet and in 2006, photos showed it to be a dwarf planet.
Click to expand...
Pluto was never considered the largest planet. That was always known to be Jupiter. Pluto was reclassified because it was discovered that there are other similar-sized, and larger (e.g., Eris) planetoids in the Kuiper Belt.

Regarding power cables, there are perhaps some explanations for why they make a sonic difference. The only ones that make any technological and scientific sense are around line filtering. Line filtering is straightforward, and has been known for over 50 years. Since then, there doesn't appear to have been any genuine technical advancement in power cables.

Reports of acoustic differences due to power cables -- including those attributed to line filtering -- really need to be investigated under appropriately controlled conditions to have any scientific credibility, because it's well-known that investigating sensory experiences without appropriate controls is subject to all manner of biases.

In short, claims of "I hear it" is only evidence that the listener hears it. It's no evidence at all that there's an acoustic basis for what is heard.
 
GChief said:
dogscanskate said:
Through 12 pages, nobody has been able to prove anything yet, we may not have the necessary equipment to do so (at least for me).
Click to expand...
Well in the few years I have been here that would be a first :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Objective proof is a notion unique to mathematics. I can mechanically prove mathematical theorems and verify their absolute correctness without any human intervention.

Outside of that, every other notion of "proof" is really about providing enough evidence to change someone's mind. In the roughly thirty years I've been on the Internet, I've seen countless attempts to change someone's mind with evidence or "proof".

I've never seen it happen.
 
dogscanskate said:
The OP asked if there was a difference between power cables listed at different prices for probably the same length. Whoever answers the question has the onus of proving it whether they believe or not in sonic differences. The way I see it is that the burden of proof rests on both sides.
Click to expand...

Well no, that's not how it works. That's like saying that a doubter of the existence of unicorns has the same burden of proof as the believer. For the doubter to "prove" his point requires cataloguing every single living thing in the universe and independently verifying that each is not a unicorn to the satisfaction of the believer. Meanwhile the believer needs only to provide a single example which should be a comparatively straightforward task.

Should there ever be an audible difference that can be heard but not measured, we simply are not measuring it correctly or we haven't developed the correct measuring instrument yet.
Click to expand...

Or there is another phenomenon at work that we have been discounting.

Through 12 pages, nobody has been able to prove anything yet, we may not have the necessary equipment to do so (at least for me).
Click to expand...

Exactly.

I'm not into esoteric cables and I keep a huge amount of skepticism when I see or read claims that are utter nonsense. I do believe there are some honest people who are trying to make better products through technological advances. In 2005 science told us Pluto was the largest planet and in 2006, photos showed it to be a dwarf planet. Science evolves and there is nothing wrong with keeping an open mind about such subjects.
Click to expand...

I'm completely open to objective demonstrations.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom