Do Fancy Audio Cables Make a Difference? (video)

[Infinite100]

it's a flaw of ALL human brains, which is why serious comparisons have double blind controls so that it's just the sound you're evaluating.

I don't think it was placebo.
I am perfectionist, obsessive, and experienced in comparisons of many kinds.
I go for hours and hours over several days, comparing this and that over and over again to consider as many variables as possible and to be sure that I'm not placeboing myself.

I am quite sure but I would not swear on my life that there was a difference between Mogami and the cheaper ones.
I liked the tactile feeling and the look of the Mogami and I might have convinced myself that it was a bit better than the rest.
And I admit that the difference was not much.
But for Golden Gate I'm sure of it. It was definitely warmer. I tried too many times to have doubts left.
Also, Placebo effect would demand that I convince myself that the one which is supposedly the best (= the Golden Gate) sounded better.
But for me the Mogami sounded better.
I did not dislike the Golden Gate, but I thought that it was not neutral. Not how the best of the best should be.

Of course, I don't deny that despite all this there still is a chance that I somehow managed to delude myself.
But I'd be VERY surprised if that was the case.

 

[HammersRocco]

I don't think it was placebo.
I am perfectionist, obsessive, and experienced in comparisons of many kinds.
I go for hours and hours over several days, comparing this and that over and over again to consider as many variables as possible and to be sure that I'm not placeboing myself.

I am quite sure but I would not swear on my life that there was a difference between Mogami and the cheaper ones.
I liked the tactile feeling and the look of the Mogami and I might have convinced myself that it was a bit better than the rest.
And I admit that the difference was not much.
But for Golden Gate I'm sure of it. It was definitely warmer. I tried too many times to have doubts left.
Also, Placebo effect would demand that I convince myself that the one which is supposedly the best (= the Golden Gate) sounded better.
But for me the Mogami sounded better.
I did not dislike the Golden Gate, but I thought that it was not neutral. Not how the best of the best should be.

Of course, I don't deny that despite all this there still is a chance that I somehow managed to delude myself.
But I'd be VERY surprised if that was the case.

I swear this is a parody, an attempt at humour or just someone inciting a discussion just for fun - which I understand! Arguments can be fun.

I pretty sure @Infinite100 knew what to expect. Infinite100 joined the forum late 2023 - pretty sure they know what's what here.

Ignore? I would recommend that.

 

[eddantes]

 

[kemmler3D]

I don't think it was placebo.

Believe me, placebo happens to everyone at some point, including (perhaps especially) to professionals. Being a perfectionist, having trained ears, etc. doesn't stop it from happening. If you expect to hear something, you will almost always hear it, regardless of whether it's real.

Check this thread: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/lets-share-placebo-effect-anecdotes.55067/

If they really sound different then there must be some significant difference in their electrical properties. (resistance, capacitance, inductance) If you would like to establish that your hypothesis is even plausible to begin with, you can measure the cables' electrical properties and start there.

Being convinced by placebo is nothing to be ashamed of, again it happens to everyone from time to time, but don't go an establish a career on that basis like some people have...

 

[Infinite100]

I swear this is a parody, an attempt at humour or just someone inciting a discussion just for fun - which I understand! Arguments can be fun.

I pretty sure @Infinite100 knew what to expect. Infinite100 joined the forum late 2023 - pretty sure they know what's what here.

Ignore? I would recommend that.

It's a good thing (or maybe a bad one, depending on whom you'd ask) that you didn't swear on your life, otherwise you'd be dead by now.

I joined in 2023 after finding this place by chance with a google search about LDAC, and I did only to thank someone for mentioning the Alternative A2DP Driver which was a game changer for me.
Since then I have never even visited this forum.
So much so that I forgot I was registered, and I've found out while attempting to register again.

I couldn't give the most infinitesimal tiny whimsy little subatomic particle of shit about convincing anybody of anything.
I do not consider myself an audiophile. I do not have any expensive piece of equipment (most expensive is the Maxwell, found at 320 euro in offer), and I've never bought expensive cables until I've needed to solve the humming issue.
Apart for this post, which was meant to ASK something, NOT to brag about anything, I never gave the lesser shit about this topic. Indeed I never even once mentioned it in the Foobar forums where I am lately quite active asking questions to learn stuff.

Personally I think that the fact that you think that I am either joking or flamebaiting just because you have a different opinion, speaks more about you than about me.
Just saying.
Make of this whatever the fuck you want.

 

[paulcc]

Your brain is the reason they sound different. That and the fact you are not doing a double blind listening test. I have gotten caught hearing things that were not there because of something shiny, expensive or new. When blind testing was done, it all went away.

 

[Soria Moria]

And I also don't know what difference I would hear with even more expensive cables (I didn't find any but I've been told they exist).

It never makes sense (beyond just placebo ofc) how simply being priced a certain amount automatically makes it better in most ways to most people.
Think about graphic cards for a moment. A 5090 is much more expensive than a 3090 and it also performs much better. We can kniw this by simply seeing what a 5090 does better on paper. More cores, higher clock speed etc. All of these should mean higher performance which objective benchmarks do show. A 5090 performs much better than a 3090.
So when it comes to cables how does this work? How can cable manefacturers know how to make a better cable when the metrics behind what even makes it better seems to not even exist in the objective realm? For GPUs get more cores, higher boost frequency etc. For cables what do you do? Do you give it overkill shielding? If so then ultra cheap Alixpress cables with fat overkill shielding would be better than most expensive cables. Every objective metric such as being 99% OFC or whatever that manefacturers claim makes the cable better can be had in very cheap cables from places like Alixpress but people never talk about how wonderful and awesome those are.
Probably because of the price as I mentioned at the start of the post. A high-end cable doesn't have to do anything differently than a super cheap one. People will say whichever is the very expensive one sounds best, even when price tags are switched around.

 

[AnalogSteph]

What immediately and completely solved the problem was a 3 poles charger for the laptop.
I guess I could have tought about it sooner, but I just supposed that LG would not sell a laptop with a 2 poles charger if it would cause such issues.
Naive me

What you had wasn't a ground loop but rather kind of the opposite - too few ground connections in the system rather than too many. If mains filtering is injecting substantial voltage into the system ground, there can be enough leakage current going through you (by way of capacitive coupling) to earth to become audible, although that's mainly a problem for in-ears and not so much full-size headphones. Maybe the higher input impedance (as a result of being ANC) makes your cans more susceptible to this, or it's parasitic coupling to high-impedance nodes on the internal circuit board which could use some better shielding then.

I would expect precious little difference between different cables to actively amplified headphones with high input impedance. Passive operation can be a different story due to shared ground return resistance when the cable partially or largely consists of 3 conductors only. If that's much greater than about 1% of nominal driver impedance (and at 32 or even 16 ohms that easily happens), there is a noticeable stereo widening and reduction in bass in particular.

 

[Chrispy]

I assume you haven't spent much time on the forum in general let alone on this subject. I do find "reports" of such as yours to be useless.

 

[HammersRocco]

It's a good thing (or maybe a bad one, depending on whom you'd ask) that you didn't swear on your life, otherwise you'd be dead by now.

I joined in 2023 after finding this place by chance with a google search about LDAC, and I did only to thank someone for mentioning the Alternative A2DP Driver which was a game changer for me.
Since then I have never even visited this forum.
So much so that I forgot I was registered, and I've found out while attempting to register again.

I couldn't give the most infinitesimal tiny whimsy little subatomic particle of shit about convincing anybody of anything.
I do not consider myself an audiophile. I do not have any expensive piece of equipment (most expensive is the Maxwell, found at 320 euro in offer), and I've never bought expensive cables until I've needed to solve the humming issue.
Apart for this post, which was meant to ASK something, NOT to brag about anything, I never gave the lesser shit about this topic. Indeed I never even once mentioned it in the Foobar forums where I am lately quite active asking questions to learn stuff.

Personally I think that the fact that you think that I am either joking or flamebaiting just because you have a different opinion, speaks more about you than about me.
Just saying.
Make of this whatever the fuck you want.

The LANGUAGE!
And I thought I was thin skinned!

I know that you are a perfectionist, with lots of experience doing comparisons.

Just consider:

Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Infinite100]

If you expect to hear something, you will almost always hear it, regardless of whether it's real.

If you would like to establish that your hypothesis is even plausible to begin with, you can measure the cables' electrical properties and start there.

Being convinced by placebo is nothing to be ashamed of.

The fact is, I did NOT expect the Golden Gate to sound warmer.
I expected them to sound "better", "purer", more "neutral", more "open".
Not warmer, which besides not being my favorite tone means that they color the sound.

I'd not be ashamed at all if it was placebo. Indeed I'm open for the possibility that there was placebo about the Mogami, because I really liked they robustness, softness, and optic, and I already own one of their XLR.
I don't care about believing, let alone convincing others, that there can be such differences.
I KNOW what I have experienced it, and that's enough for me.

I can't run any tests, I wouldn't even know how, and anyway I returned the AudioQuest, I don't need many fancy cables, I only needed one well isolated, robust cable, and the fact that the Mogami on top of that (maybe) also sounded a bit better is just an unexpected plus. If this plus is a placebo, it doesn't bother me, as I'd have happily paid those 30 euro anyway for a cable which is so well built and isolated and which makes me happy just by looking at it.
Although, if I had not know about the Mogami, I would have been almost as happy with this Kabel-Direkt which costed me only 1/4 of the Mogami

Anyway.
As I am not even remotely interested in convincing anyone, I also couldn't care less about being convinced of something.
I've read enough comments about how I'm deceiving myself, and I took note of them.
If nobody has something different to add, e.g. about why the AudioQuest Golden Gate "might" eventually maybe sound warmer than other cables, I'd have better use of my time than disguising myself as alleged flamebaiter to please those who need to see me like that.

 

[pablolie]

There is zero controversy. If a cable sounds different it means it brought coloration into the picture, which personally I think is the least desirable effect a cable should have. It should never ever be an active element influencing sound. But hey, if someone wants to spend thousands on something that changes the way their components were designed to sound, it's up to them.
Does gravity exist? Does it hurt if you hit your head against something hard? Are the Kardashians glorified wh*res? Some things simply don't need to be proven again and again...

 

[Infinite100]

I assume you haven't spent much time on the forum in general let alone on this subject. I do find "reports" of such as yours to be useless.

No need to assume, the same fingers you used to type your findness you can use them to click on my profile and check my activity.
NONE since one comment in 2023 (like I had just written in my previous comment btw).

FYI (no, it's not fuck yourself idiot, it's really just for your info), mine was not a report.
It was a question. I was naive enough to believe that the scientific in the name of this forum meant that there are people who are curious (first quality of a scientist) and would have wanted to check the cable's specs and speculate about what might ever possibly justify a slightly warmer tone.
Best case scenario I hoped that someone had a similar experience with that cable, or even the opposite, but a DIRECT one.
Too bad, not my lucky day

 

[Chrispy]

No need to assume, the same fingers you used to type your findness you can use them to click on my profile and check my activity.
NONE since one comment in 2023 (like I had just written in my previous comment btw).

FYI (no, it's not fuck yourself idiot, it's really just for your info), mine was not a report.
It was a question. I was naive enough to believe that the scientific in the name of this forum meant that there are people who are curious (first quality of a scientist) and would have wanted to check the cable's specs and speculate about what might ever possibly justify a slightly warmer tone.
Best case scenario I hoped that someone had a similar experience with that cable, or even the opposite, but a DIRECT one.
Too bad, not my lucky day

LOL 8 messages as a count is not much. The rest of your rant is weird.

 

[SIY]

I don't think it was placebo.

You asked for a scientific explanation. You got one.

 

[kemmler3D]

I don't care about believing, let alone convincing others, that there can be such differences.
I KNOW what I have experienced it, and that's enough for me.

This is where people go wrong and start spending their money on snake oil. "I know what I heard" - well, you don't. You don't know why you heard it, or exactly what changed in the sound.

If you could find something in the signal that plausibly matched what you heard, we'd be in business. But if you're not going to go to the extent of trying to find the actual cause, you can either give up the argument, or find someone who can do it for you.


Just bear in mind that nobody has ever passed a properly executed blind test of cables in terms of their effect on sound.

speculate about what might ever possibly justify a slightly warmer tone.

Like I said, it would have to be the electrical properties of the cable. That's all the relevant properties a cable has.

If you aren't going to try to run down what might be causing what you're hearing (it's definitely placebo, but don't let facts get in the way of pride and wasted time) you can read reports by people who have: https://archimago.blogspot.com/2020/02/measurements-archimagos-colorful.html

I was naive enough to believe that the scientific in the name of this forum meant that there are people who are curious (first quality of a scientist) and would have wanted to check the cable's specs and speculate about what might ever possibly justify a slightly warmer tone.

What you are doing here is roughly equivalent to logging on to a biology forum and claiming you saw bigfoot. If you don't share photos, you can't expect to be taken seriously.

Nothing personal, but "cables sound warm/cool/etc" has been scientifically debunked for decades, and placebo is basically universal. Nobody is surprised if you hear something when you do a sighted, uncontrolled test between cables, opamps, or even magic rocks you place near your DAC.

This is exactly why we have a name for the proper kind of test - a blind test - because when you see what's changed in your system people's brains almost always invent differences that aren't actually there.

 

[pablolie]

The entire premise of improving the sound through cables is bizarre to me. The purpose of cables is transparency. It has been proven in many applications far more life critical than audio that's taken care of by straight copper. End of story. I do own premium copper cables but it's just for looks. I am glad I didn't hear any change in sound.
If one wants to improve sound, do the obvious... get different components. Cables have zero place in being active components in an audio chain or anywhere else. I find the concept intellectually insulting.

Note I work in an industry where we are moving towards supporting 1.6 Terabits per second interfaces for applications in Healthcare and Military and Finance in AI data centers. And cables are important... but they just have to be spec. That's all. They are irrelevant.

 

[Infinite100]

The LANGUAGE!

I consider content more important than form, and I find that insinuating that someone's trolling/flamebaiting is much more disrespectful than saying shit and fuck.
We're all adults anyway. As long as there's no insult, some spice is fun

if someone wants to spend thousands on something that changes the way their components were designed to sound, it's up to them.

Well, I still didn't quite understand all the theory of how things are supposed to sound, because even having the musicians in front of me it would sound different depending on the room where they play, how many people there are, which speakers are being used, etc.
Sure, it's a recording, and it has precise qualities which the playback setup should be able to mirror as much as possible, but there too, you ask person A and they'll swear that vynil are best, person B will say CD, person C Hi-Res FLAC.
With all variables, most notably the DAC and the headphones (or the speakers/room combo), it's freaking exhausting trying to get that sneaky pure sound that nobody really knows if it exists in the first place.
And even hardcore audiophiles talk of their expensive headphones tube amp with that delicious slight warmth.
For instance I just found out that the Wicked Cushion earpads for the Maxwell sound different than the Geekria, more intimate, warmer and with more bass, derspite having same external materials and almost same dimensions (just half cm less in horizontal space inside. I suppose that together with their denser foam it's enough to affect the sound differently). And I was contemplating keeping both, and using the Wicked Cushion when I listen to Techno and other bass heavy music.

Btw, the Golden Gate was only 35 Euro for 1.5m... I don't think it's an unreasonable price for just only a robust and well isolated cable.
But I totally understand the concept and I agree.

LOL 8 messages as a count is not much. The rest of your rant is weird.

ONE message. The rest is from today.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Weirdness too. We always only see what we have inside

You asked for a scientific explanation. You got one.

Fair enough.
I reject the explanation. I'm like Saint Thomas, even if Jesus tell me X, if what I see and hear is Y that's what counts for me.
But although I reject it I don't discard it or forget it.
If one day I'll have the chance, I will definitely run a blind test. As I said before, curiosity is the core of every science.

The entire premise of improving the sound through cables is bizarre to me. The purpose of cables is transparency. It has been proven in many applications far more life critical than audio that's taken care of by straight copper. End of story. I do own premium copper cables but it's just for looks. I am glad I didn't hear any change in sound.
If one wants to improve sound, do the obvious... get different components. Cables have zero place in being active components in an audio chain. I find the concept intellectually insulting.

If you're talking of me, you heavily misunderstood my sharing.
I disliked the AudioQuest BECAUSE it colored the sound.
I ended choosing the Mogami BECAUSE it was the one which sounded more transparent, open, "pure".
If the Mogami would have looked as ugly and felt as unpleasantly rough and stiff as the AudioQuest, I would have most probably just been happy with the KabelDirekt for 7.50 Euro instead of 30, which I am still not sure if it sounded any different than the Mogami (= less transparent and open).
But again, I disagree that color = bad.
I'm not aware of any setup that can achieve perfect neutrality, and my brain refuses to even want to understand if such a thing is even possible, like I explained to, ah, it was you , a few lines here above.
For me, music is meant to be enjoyed. If I am happier with a bit more bass or a bit more highs or a bit more warmth, I couldn't care less that my setup is not neutral.
Matter of tastes, more than matter of belief, for me personally.


Cheers, it was insightful

 

[GXAlan]

Placebo does not mean the same thing as an auditory hallucination.

In studies and in real life, placebos have a powerful healing effect on the body and mind

Sometimes called “sugar pills”, the concept has been around since the 1800s.

www.michiganmedicine.org

You heard the difference because your brain really did experience the difference. Super cool. But the cables electrically did not change the sound. Also super cool.

 

[dpturner]

controversy? barely rises to cliche'...