Speaker cables have shown to made a difference... does it matter?

[Bigerik]

That's a fair question and may be an area worthy of exploring. I will say that I wouldn't be surprised that within the context of these conversations that the meaning will be subjectively interpreted.

Some will say that the concentration required during a test may interfere with actual hearing to the extent that a person won't be able to hear an actual difference.

OTOH, it can be argued that man's "survival mechanism" heightens one's ability to discern sound during a concentrated effort and one is able to perceive that there is, in fact, a difference..........or perhaps, no difference.

Best Regards,
TerryO

My understanding is we get less detailed in our processing when we are listening to survive something. More a matter of where the saber toothed tiger is, rather than if it is a male or female growl.

 

[dumptruck]

Well, that is what is happening with the speaker cable debate. I honestly DO NOT see the posts where people that run expensive cables are trying to push them on anybody else. It has always been just what is described here. Somebody barging in and telling everybody that their couldn't possibly be a difference. And thus the burden of proof rests squarely on them, because they are making the stand.

Agreed. I have seen a few of the posts you say you do not see, but just a few.

What I have seen relatively often is someone popping into a thread unrelated to cables and saying "well, you really shouldn't judge that until you get some better cables" or "you should put a lot more of that budget toward cables". That's okay, but often somebody feels compelled to point out to the OP that they might not want to take the cable statement seriously. That is also okay, but they don't succeed at doing that diplomatically, or they do but the cable suggester turns out to be touchy about it, and things go bad. In those situations, we're a long way from burden of proof and such things. It's just conversations going poorly.

As far as someone simply barging into a cable discussion to blow everyone's mind with their hard facts? Yeah, it happens a lot, and it's dumb.

 

[VinylRob]

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Ding ding ding! I spend ALL DAY in front of a computer at work and work in short bursts then get mentally tired and come back online but like to keep my brain going instead of watching cat videos, so I argue about cables.

Right now i'm in a coffee shop looking out upon a rainy city street. Somehow this debate is comforting in all this.

What everybody needs to remember is that however we differ on the cable debate, we're all kind of in the same nerdy corner of the party talking about stereos. We have more in common than our differences would suggest.

Have you heard a quote, what are we collectively, maybe one tenth of one percent of the industrialized world, at best? Now that's funny!

Happy (unproven) Listening!

 

[JohnVF]

Agreed. I have seen a few of the posts you say you do not see, but just a few.

What I have seen relatively often is someone popping into a thread unrelated to cables and saying "well, you really shouldn't judge that until you get some better cables" or "you should put a lot more of that budget toward cables". That's okay, but often somebody feels compelled to point out to the OP that they might not want to take the cable statement seriously. That is also okay, but they don't succeed at doing that diplomatically, or they do but the cable suggester turns out to be touchy about it, and things go bad. In those situations, we're a long way from burden of proof and such things. It's just conversations going poorly.

As far as someone simply barging into a cable discussion to blow everyone's mind with their hard facts? Yeah, it happens a lot, and it's dumb.

I don't think a friendly nudge in either direction is out of line. Its the absolutes in this hobby that cause me to roll my eyes. I honestly don't trust anybody in this hobby who hasn't had their mind changed on at least one thing. So the person who absolutely knows for sure one way or the other gets me scrolling. Or, embarrassingly, ranting...

 

[Bigerik]

Having been cleaning these threads up for years now, the anti-cable troll posts outnumber the pro-cable troll posts by 100 to 1 easily.

 

[Hyfi]

Ding ding ding! I spend ALL DAY in front of a computer at work and work in short bursts then get mentally tired and come back online but like to keep my brain going instead of watching cat videos, so I argue about cables.

Ahem.....Discuss I hope you meant to say

 

[VinylRob]

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If by "myth" you mean the concept that all remotely adequate speaker cables sound the same, that's not something I "believe", it's something I think is probably true because I don't see a reason to suspect otherwise. The "burden of proof" is only on you if you want to convince me that your opinion is fact.

Maybe I see it a little different,

Which is closer to the truth, an experience or an explanation of that experience?

For me the later is woefully inadequate.

It is like me telling you about my experience of listening to a performance, you may deduce, you may believe, or you may be able to associate some aspects of it with previous (different but similar) experiences of you own, you understand my explanation but what you fail to have is the full impact of that performance in my experience. To me, this is why I find it absurd to only consider what is true as something that one can measure. I do think it is wise and reasonable though to be skeptical. Would you trust you experience if you heard cable differences but they could not be explained with science?

 

[VinylRob]

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Having been cleaning these threads up for years now, the anti-cable troll posts outnumber the pro-cable troll posts by 100 to 1 easily.

Ha, ha, ha...Thanks, I needed that.

 

[VinylRob]

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My understanding is we get less detailed in our processing when we are listening to survive something. More a matter of where the saber toothed tiger is, rather than if it is a male or female growl.

And little cats that prrrrrr and we are relaxed by, sit next to us and get us to more intently listen to details, opps, that's my other thread.

Now I know why I hear cable differences and other people don't... it's the cat!!!!

Happy Listening!

 

[robgmn]

Maybe I see it a little different,

Which is closer to the truth, an experience or an explanation of that experience?

For me the later is woefully inadequate.

It is like me telling you about my experience of listening to a performance, you may deduce, you may believe, or you may be able to associate some aspects of it with previous (different but similar) experiences of you own, you understand my explanation but what you fail to have is the full impact of that performance in my experience. To me, this is why I find it absurd to only consider what is true as something that one can measure. I do think it is wise and reasonable though to be skeptical. Would you trust you experience if you heard cable differences but they could not be explained with science?

Would you belive me if I told you that the middle signal on a traffic light is purple, even though everyone else sees it as amber and a spectrometer indicates it is amber?

We ARE discussing things that can be explained and proven by science without the flawed "human experience" being used for any data.

Imagine this: you're in a room full of people talking att he same volume. You distinclty hear your name uttered by someone across the room.
This does not mean they spoke louder, it means your brain filtered out what it NEEDED to hear (this is the human experience part).
Another example is the video of a man saying "fa, fa, fa" (or something similar). There are two soundtracks for the video, each with two different sounds, but you'd SWEAR each one belongs to the video as you're watching it, no matter what the facts are.
The human experience.

Now, apply it to cables. Under the placebo effect, people may hear differences between two cables/etc. that are actually identical because they EXPECT there to be differences (like the guy who knows his car runs better after he washes it), or may not hear legitimate differences because they don't believe they should.
The human experience.

People will listen to a piece of music and "place" the instruments in a point in space, even though the recording was done in multiple takes by individual performers in a sound studio.
The human experience.

Despite proof that you cannot influence the outcome of random events, people with clutch to their lucky rabbit foot when gambling, and blame their losses on not HAVING that rabbit foot.
The human experience.

Science can be used to eliminate the very strong potential error of the human experience, and in the case of audiology, science can do everything needed to prove whether two things are the same or different (no matter what the PERCEPTION of thos two things is.)

 

[JohnVF]

Would you belive me if I told you that the middle signal on a traffic light is purple, even though everyone else sees it as amber and a spectrometer indicates it is amber?

I wouldn't believe anything you told me about a traffic signal if you had never seen one in your life.

 

[kirk57]

this is just a restatement of "prove it", once again.

 

[ebacon]

Oy vey!

Cables are apparently the audio board equivalent of aviation's lean of peak discussions.

 

[robgmn]

this is just a restatement of "prove it", once again.

Incorrect.
It is a statement that it CAN be proven.
Big difference.

 

[dumptruck]

Would you trust you experience if you heard cable differences but they could not be explained with science?

If my experience was being able to tell a difference in a blind test, but there was no explanation available, then yes. If by "heard" you mean I hooked up a new cable and thought it sounded better, no. If I felt pretty sure I heard a difference, I would swap a few more times. If I still felt pretty sure, I would most likely become obsessed with finding an ABX I could pass.

 

[VinylRob]

><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸.·´¯`·...¸><((((º>`·.¸¸.·´¯ `· .¸.·´¯`·...¸><((((º>

Would you belive me if I told you that the middle signal on a traffic light is purple, even though everyone else sees it as amber and a spectrometer indicates it is amber?

We ARE discussing things that can be explained and proven by science without the flawed "human experience" being used for any data.

Imagine this: you're in a room full of people talking att he same volume. You distinclty hear your name uttered by someone across the room.
This does not mean they spoke louder, it means your brain filtered out what it NEEDED to hear (this is the human experience part).
Another example is the video of a man saying "fa, fa, fa" (or something similar). There are two soundtracks for the video, each with two different sounds, but you'd SWEAR each one belongs to the video as you're watching it, no matter what the facts are.
The human experience.

Now, apply it to cables. Under the placebo effect, people may hear differences between two cables/etc. that are actually identical because they EXPECT there to be differences (like the guy who knows his car runs better after he washes it), or may not hear legitimate differences because they don't believe they should.
The human experience.

People will listen to a piece of music and "place" the instruments in a point in space, even though the recording was done in multiple takes by individual performers in a sound studio.
The human experience.

Despite proof that you cannot influence the outcome of random events, people with clutch to their lucky rabbit foot when gambling, and blame their losses on not HAVING that rabbit foot.
The human experience.

Science can be used to eliminate the very strong potential error of the human experience, and in the case of audiology, science can do everything needed to prove whether two things are the same or different (no matter what the PERCEPTION of thos two things is.)

I don't see evidence that science has all the answers and even if it did, it would be flawed by my human experience of that science. So, I guess I'll one day grow tired of trying to communicate the idea of ears being the best decider of those things we hear and then I will just sit quietly and contently and listen to my mind tricking me into believing my cables are making my sound more to my liking.

I wouldn't believe anything you told me about a traffic signal if you had never seen one in your life.

Dido.

What a complete mind F'ing this thing is some times

Happy (believing that your cables effect the sound) Listening!

 

[dumptruck]

So, I guess I'll one day grow tired of trying to communicate the idea of ears being the best decider of those things we hear

Ironically, that half of your sentence is the reason for using a blind test in the first place. Otherwise, we'd just use measurements for everything, as we are now discussing in parallel for some reason .

 

[JohnVF]

If my experience was being able to tell a difference in a blind test, but there was no explanation available, then yes. If by "heard" you mean I hooked up a new cable and thought it sounded better, no. If I felt pretty sure I heard a difference, I would swap a few more times. If I still felt pretty sure, I would most likely become obsessed with finding an ABX I could pass.

That goes to show how different it is for different people. Me? I put something in, and if I feel it makes a difference, I give it a shot for the long term. I re-evaluate how I feel about it at a much later date, sometimes putting the original back in. But most of all, I don't sweat it that much. "Ok, this seems to be a bit better, why not?" I pretty much do everything I can to not let stress invade my hobby (except staying out of forum debates).

 

[dumptruck]

The other part of that difference is not considering methodical testing to be stressful .

 

[doucanoe]

If that was the case, I'm pretty well convinced I would be much more obsessed with listening to more music than spending time trying to figure out why it sounded better.

Maybe this somewhat explains and defines why this subject will never be put to rest.

I don't get them, and they conversely and equally so, don't get me. I personally choose to just leave it at that. It's all good.


RC