Really? Double blind? Correct 19 times out of 20?
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Amplifier for Focal Kanta Nº2
- Thread starter Diecastt
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Well, you're gonna be shocked a lot if you stay around here.
The only way to verify audibility (of anything) is through the use of blind tests ... the more repetitions the better, statistically speaking. Tests need to be rigorously controlled and all "tells" in the environment need to be eliminated. The best way to do this is to have someone else use a switchbox.
The reason for all this is to eliminate bias. Bias is very powerful, and cannot be eliminated by willpower alone. Here's a list of biases:
List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia
And here is the correct way to run tests for audibility:
Audio Blind Testing - You Are Doing It Wrong! (Video)
Just uploaded a video on the basics of performing controlled tests in audio. It was motivated by saving myself text in having to write all of this down when telling someone who to do these tests right. And as a counter to a few online personalities to keep saying they do "blind" tests yet when...
www.audiosciencereview.com
Notice the reliance on precise matching of output levels. If levels are not matched, the comparison is predictable, but worthless.
Jim
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Then after two years being a member here, you should have been "shocked" a lot of times...
Never said such a thing.
In uncontrolled conditions, so these tests are worthless.
My ears are perfectly fine, thank you.
Yes, sure. How was the process?
Vacceo
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Do you have the numbers and repeatable tests to justify such claim?
Measuring instruments do not have biases, we humans do. That's why we do not trust our perceptions, we check them out with external methods.
Guys it’s really lovely how you react in protest to my words but it was proven already that cables do change sound- in numbers- but most importantly, apart from bias claims that are impossible to deny, I stated and I still do, please use ears. I happen to have Kanta 2 and Nova and tried to go through similar process of calming them. Tried multiple cables and picked ones that brought the focus on to lower mids and took it away from the highs a bit. And no I did not pick one I liked because of brand, I actually really wanted to like Naim cable for example and yet hated its U shape character in my system.
My wife was really laughing at me till she actually got a chance to vote. With my two sons. All agreed on separate sessions to same conclusions.
Is is scientific? Hahahah hell no. I did not claim it to be. Was it biased? Yes but not in a way You implied
But they used ears, and voted for a warmer sound with biggest sound stage and vivid lower mids.
Did it solve the problem of Naim /Kanta? Nope. Amp would. It made it better.
But You are correct, that form is meant for drastically different statements
Peace
My wife was really laughing at me till she actually got a chance to vote. With my two sons. All agreed on separate sessions to same conclusions.
Is is scientific? Hahahah hell no. I did not claim it to be. Was it biased? Yes but not in a way You implied
But they used ears, and voted for a warmer sound with biggest sound stage and vivid lower mids. Did it solve the problem of Naim /Kanta? Nope. Amp would. It made it better.
But You are correct, that form is meant for drastically different statements
Peace
Kanta 2s pull a lot of power and not thick enough-high gauge speaker cables will not be able to cope with the loads. That doesnt mean speaker cable quality matters. You probably correctly picked the thickest cable by ear.
Do you have any paper or studies to point out? I'm not aware of any.
That is probably precisely the case. And this is where we differ in definitions; that is exactly the matter I answered to. I tested Naim Nac5, cleanwayX, Phantom, and two others. All copper high-quality cables, and yet, as You say, we picked one. I did not even bother testing 10k cables or silver ones for a contrasting experience. I do not imply that someone needs to buy expensive cables. What I say is that there was an audible difference in my system. Probably, Nova is too weak. How often could it happen? And how often could thicker cables ease out amp problems that could be audible with sensitive speakers?
That is all I am implying, and I did read a TON on cables and that we should hear the difference in super high freq above hearing.
But I also read that there is a diff in impedance and a few other minor aspects that could make an impact.
Broad binary statements that make no difference don’t match my experience. Obviously, that is not enough to prove anything, I agree with that though my reaction was and is to a broad binary statement that cables make no difference to any speaker. We just proved that it could not always be the case.
Megatest speaker cables - real measurements, samples and blind test!
What a bizarrely intensive, educational and special speaker cable test this has been to do. The aim was to establish a link between measuring and listening.
www.alpha-audio.net
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Vacceo
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Not only Amir right here, but also Gene at Audioholics has demonstrated several times that cables do not change the signal.Guys it’s really lovely how you react in protest to my words but it was proven already that cables do change sound- in numbers- but most importantly, apart from bias claims that are impossible to deny, I stated and I still do, please use ears. I happen to have Kanta 2 and Nova and tried to go through similar process of calming them. Tried multiple cables and picked ones that brought the focus on to lower mids and took it away from the highs a bit. And no I did not pick one I liked because of brand, I actually really wanted to like Naim cable for example and yet hated its U shape character in my system.
My wife was really laughing at me till she actually got a chance to vote. With my two sons. All agreed on separate sessions to same conclusions.
Is is scientific? Hahahah hell no. I did not claim it to be. Was it biased? Yes but not in a way You implied
Did it solve the problem of Naim /Kanta? Nope. Amp would. It made it better.
But You are correct, that form is meant for drastically different statements
Peace
Cables are perhaps the easiest part of the setup: either they work as intended or they do not.
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I have measured differences of interconnects and even component positions. (Which have been posted here) So we can measure them. The difference in sound is not detectable to my ears but even if you can hear the difference, the best piece of advice you can get from here is that most regular audiophiles build balanced systems with a little bit in speakers, a little bit in electronics and tiny bit in cables.
But the reality is that you need to go all in with speakers.
Kanta 2 with Naim Nova will lose to a Kanta 3 with cheaper Denon electronics and generic KabelDirekt cables. Or moving up to Sopra 2, etc.
Skimp on everything to free up the budget to get the very best speakers. Awesome speakers with mass market electronics will win in the present day. This wasn’t true 10 years ago. This is the power of measurements and science.
Why are you here, exactly?Guys it’s really lovely how you react in protest to my words but it was proven already that cables do change sound- in numbers- but most importantly, apart from bias claims that are impossible to deny, I stated and I still do, please use ears. I happen to have Kanta 2 and Nova and tried to go through similar process of calming them. Tried multiple cables and picked ones that brought the focus on to lower mids and took it away from the highs a bit. And no I did not pick one I liked because of brand, I actually really wanted to like Naim cable for example and yet hated its U shape character in my system.
My wife was really laughing at me till she actually got a chance to vote. With my two sons. All agreed on separate sessions to same conclusions.
Is is scientific? Hahahah hell no. I did not claim it to be. Was it biased? Yes but not in a way You implied
Did it solve the problem of Naim /Kanta? Nope. Amp would. It made it better.
But You are correct, that form is meant for drastically different statements
Peace
Wow, and You?
And yet, please see the link above. Guys who did that insist the difference is there and is audible. I agree with Your statement in general, yet in Kanta 2 / Naim, it seems like some cables don't work ( using Your vocabulary ), as there was a clear difference in audio reproduction.
Measured differences between interconnect cables
Presented purely for interest. TLDR: 1) Differences in cables exist and can be measured at the audio level and achieve statistically significant differences 2) The differences are vanishingly small, so it doesn't make sense when listening to audio 3) The differences may make a difference when...
www.audiosciencereview.com
Measured effect of cable routing/component placement
In DIY amplifier kits, there is often talk of cable routing and effects on measured performance. Here I would like to show the difference with real, premium electronics using worst case topologies. Test Setup Topping D90 MQA Belden 8423 0.8m XLR balanced cable Marantz PM-10 integrated amp...
www.audiosciencereview.com
But my recommendation remains: skimp on electronics and cables. Put as much as you can into speakers instead. You don’t need to like the speaker with the highest preference score but for all but the wealthiest audiophiles, you almost always can move up the line within a brand that you like that’s appropriate from the listening distance.
I would say it has been the case since CD came on the market.
Focal speakers are often difficult loads though. I'm not surprised a Naim amp won't get the best out of them.
Cables only matter if too thin or too long. That's fact not speculation.
Blindly depending on double blind tests is also not very scientific.
Most claimed speaker cable differences are snake oil. And you don't even need a magnetically shielded speaker cable in general. But even that depends on the magnitude of the power wire, and if it contains a lot of harmonics that could be induced into the speaker wire and travel back to the amplifier and find their way back into the preamp section, it will be amplified along with the original signal.
None of that is ever likely to happen, even though speaker power wiring is not usually shielded. If, by chance you had 25m of coil of welding cables laying on top of a speaker cable that was also coiled up, I guess you could get enough induced emf to make it heard in the speaker directly.
Most claimed speaker cable differences are snake oil. And you don't even need a magnetically shielded speaker cable in general. But even that depends on the magnitude of the power wire, and if it contains a lot of harmonics that could be induced into the speaker wire and travel back to the amplifier and find their way back into the preamp section, it will be amplified along with the original signal.
None of that is ever likely to happen, even though speaker power wiring is not usually shielded. If, by chance you had 25m of coil of welding cables laying on top of a speaker cable that was also coiled up, I guess you could get enough induced emf to make it heard in the speaker directly.
I am not discussing that advice as it was not the point of my opinion. I agree with You on that statement. What I mentioned, and I will say again, is that I did hear a difference in the sound when I changed cables with Nova/Kanta 2, just like the person stated a few posts above. I did not say that it is the way to fix it, nor that it did fix it. It did make a change—a noticeable one in the right direction. I am aware of the data around that topic and the nature of that forum. I went through discussions with my brother on this. He studied electronics and communications, and I heard all the info about it from him. The story is I got great contact with my dealer, and he threw many cables for me to play around and pick one. They were at a similar price. I did not have an opinion before trying, apart from maybe a bit of skepticism. I own many decent headphones and know silver cables changed some of my setups, but those were relatively sane decisions, and silver is known to make sound brighter if done right.Measured differences between interconnect cables
Presented purely for interest. TLDR: 1) Differences in cables exist and can be measured at the audio level and achieve statistically significant differences 2) The differences are vanishingly small, so it doesn't make sense when listening to audio 3) The differences may make a difference when...
Measured effect of cable routing/component placement
In DIY amplifier kits, there is often talk of cable routing and effects on measured performance. Here I would like to show the difference with real, premium electronics using worst case topologies. Test Setup Topping D90 MQA Belden 8423 0.8m XLR balanced cable Marantz PM-10 integrated amp...
But my recommendation remains: skimp on electronics and cables. Put as much as you can into speakers instead. You don’t need to like the speaker with the highest preference score but for all but the wealthiest audiophiles, you almost always can move up the line within a brand that you like that’s appropriate from the listening distance.
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D
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If you heard a difference, replicate that difference in a controlled blind test. If it cannot be replicated, then it didn't exist.
Complete and utter BS. Con artists and demagogues have gotten gullible people to believe that silver makes sounds brighter, but a wire is a wire. It has measurable characteristics, which means measurable characteristics in regards to signals outside the audio range as well as regards audio signals, and those characteristics bearing on audio can be duplicated with other common metals used for wire.
This "British Audiophile" has guff that is totally subjective, totally without proof, and totally worthless. He quotes electrical characteristics that have nothing to do with audio, and leads people to believe that those characteristics are meaningful for audio. They aren't.
I fear that you, my friend, have been manipulated by Masters of The Craft, and taken for a ride down Snake Oil Road.
Please refrain from giving the OP misleading advice. He won't be able to change the audible characteristics of the Kanta by changing cables.
Jim
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Vacceo
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What is stated witouth proof can be dismissed without it.
I'm sure he believes that, but he gives no proof. Out of respect for religious people around here I will not say more than there is something called Jerusalem Syndrome. I have no doubt that in the mind of those affected, they are prophets, but being such is not as clear.
