Message to golden-eared audiophiles posting at ASR for the first time...

[fpitas]

I think the idea is try to recreate the experience of the studio monitoring of the final mastered mix.

Good luck with that.

They have big horn speakers; I have big horn speakers. What's not to like?

 

[krabapple]

The frustrating thing is that he did make one enlightened point, that due to a high RF field a cable with a better shield and ferrite filter made a difference, which I think is quite feasible.

Feasible, if you are in a 'high RF' environment, high enough to be problematic, and can demonstrate that. Again, this is covered under 'fit for purpose'.

Similarly , if you run very long lengths of speaker cable, thin-gauge speaker cable would not be fit for purpose. Under typical circumstances , it's audibly inconsequential.

While providing for such corner cases, is remains incorrect to assert or assume or argue as if cables are as likely as not to sound different.

Yet the Piggybacks of the audiophile world do that routinely.

Personally, I think cable changes can have audible effects beyond placebo but where scientific reproducibility is challenging - namely contact oxidation/migration over time. Removing the contamination by just unplugging and replugging can make a difference, but it's difficult to develop a viable, non-laboratory method to measure the effect.

Can you at least model what the audible effects might be?

 

[Sal1950]

Consequently, trying to recreate a 'live' experience at home is pretty much futile as few recordings have ever been made that way.

Full agree, that's what I said.

I think the idea is try to recreate the experience of the studio monitoring of the final mastered mix.

Good luck with that.

That's what's always referred to as the circle of confusion.
As music lovers and audiophiles we only really have one of two choices.
1. To put together as accurate a system as possible and accept the differences that the mixing was done
listening to different speakers than we have. After that small mods to taste are done.
2. Just do whatever the hell you want with gear, etc. The "sounds good to me" approach.

I used to be firmly in the first category, passive preamp, no tone controls, and all that.
Today I still mostly belong in the first group but feel free to create a DRC room curve that pleases me
or upsample 2ch to multich playback. I'm in good company with Floyd Toole there.

 

[krabapple]

Yes I agree. There's no magical property in wire or connectors.

What I obviously wasn't clear about is that I was talking about the degradation over time of electrical contacts due to humidity, contamination etc. There is plenty of scientific research in this area (mainly to do with degradation of switching contacts) and lots of measurements.

In a large studio with hundreds of patch cables and "break" sockets, contamination over longish periods can lead to noise and faults. This is quite common, and often a re-plug fixes the issue for a further period, but if not, cleaning the contacts resolved the problem. The point I was making above is - this effect would be difficult to setup as an experiment outside of a lab where contamination can be controlled. The change in resistance, and any semi-conduction impact is likely to require sensitive measurement gear and no-one has the time or patience to do this.

Many of us here assume that reported cable sound differences are due to cognitive biases or placebo. But I also think that there's a beneficial consequence of just unplugging the first cable and plugging in the second. A proper experiment would have three facets: 1) a test with the current cables in after being undisturbed for several months; 2) a test with the same cables after contact cleaning or just re-plugging; 3) a test with the new cables. Skipping the 2nd test is where the process is flawed.

I don't feel I need to 'unplug and replug' my digital e.g. HDMI cables if there's no glitches, do you? There's no in between stage where the glitch is barely audible/visible, then gets louder/more distinct. It's yes/no.

And even with 'analog' cables, if you consider the language in claims of cable sound differences, does it comport with being caused by corrosion on the contacts?

 

[Sal1950]

I don't feel I need to 'unplug and replug' my HDMI cables if there's no glitches, do you?

Me either. But I do wish they had some minimal locking device at least like ethernet or
old time phone jacks. I hate the thought of them getting intermittent or falling out completely.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I don't feel I need to 'unplug and replug' my digital e.g. HDMI cables if there's no glitches, do you? There's no in between stage where the glitch is barely audible/visible, then gets louder/more distinct. It's yes/no

No

And even with 'analog' cables, if you consider the language in claims of cable sound differences, does it comport with being caused by corrosion on the contacts?

No

 

[MattHooper]

But it changes nothing. Our Hooper merely excels at being wrong.

Gee...what brought that on? I was quite civil towards your own position. Some days it doesn't pay to be nice, I guess.

He aims to harness arguments and reasoning to serve some of his arbitrary subjective feelings and make them weigh as much as facts do. It's impossible. That's chasing rainbows.

Well, you can of course choose this route of just complaining to someone else, denigrating an argument without actually showing where I said anything incorrect.
I mean you can just declare yourself to be spouting facts, and pretend I haven't stated any facts. But that's not terribly cogent.

I gave the example of live music,

Right, which I addressed and which you've ignored for some reason.

but take any recording you want; some guys did it with their equipment and their ears, it can be Nosaj Thing, nothing live about it. What do you think, can you come close to what they made in their studio the same way I described with removing variables or by adding variables?

Depends on what we are talking about. If we are talking about reproducing the sound the artist heard in their studio through their monitors, then that's one thing (and we have the circle of confusion to contend with).

But I responded to your post where you started off talking about how systems, colored systems in particular, will depart from a live performance. Hence the live vs reproduced problem, and that's the point I was addressing.

It's naive to think that altering the recorded signal can not make it sound "better" or more natural or more realistic. It shouldn't take a moment to even realize this.
Manipulation to the sound of recordings is done all the time to achieve the desired result, in music recording, or film recording etc.

I make a living recording and manipulating sound. Sometimes we are manipulating it for heightened dramatic effect, but often we are manipulating it to sound more natural, more realistic. Very often the recordings we have (often from pre recorded libraries when we don't record them ourselves) don't sound convincing like the object on screen. So I often have to ADD COLORATIONS to the sound to make it seem MORE REAL. That can be adding compression, altering it with EQ, removing or adding reverberation, and very often layering in all sorts of other different sounds which have the effect of creating a MORE REALISTIC sound than one could get from the original recording.

This principle of manipulating/adding to/coloring the sound of a recording to make it sound more natural or realistic is not something that remains in some sealed off box in producing sound. It's a general principle, applicable wherever one can manipulate sound to a degree that it might sound "better" or "more natural/realistic" than if the original sound had been reproduced more accurately.

Therefore, as I said, while yes, IF a recording contains a certain amount of realism, reproducing it most accurately will be a good way of maintaining that realism. But many recordings have colorations and IN PRINCIPLE some alteration in the playback of those recordings can move them to a more natural/realistic sound.
And then there are the general deficiencies in stereo reproduction itself, and one can play with that in trying to produce...at least for one's own goals...a more convincingly natural presentation (e.g. someone may find added room reflections to bring something more convincing to the sound).

Up to you if you want to address these points, or avoid them...

 

[krabapple]

oh god here we go again

 

[Killingbeans]

You are saying R2R Dacs sound exactly the same as delta Sigma dacs?

Nothing in the world of electrical engineering seems to suggest that there should be any audible difference between those two, if both are well implemented.

The only "evidence" to the contrary have so far been anecdotes and/or vague marketing blurbs.

 

[MattHooper]

oh god here we go again

 

[Doodski]

For a extra punch I like to combine Tylenol wityh X-strength Advil. It makes for some relaxation and better sleeps I think.

 

[Timcognito]

I think you are being too dismissive. The phenomenon demonstrated by such a 'phantom switch' test has huge implications for audio evaluation.


But 'just' demonstrating that the 'placebo effect' results in an all but impossible belief here, doesn't seem to faze radical audio subjectivists. They simply dismiss it as something that they don't do.




Yes, these are called 'just noticeable differences' , they are standard part of psychoacoustics data independent of Floyd Toole, and they're beside my point. No one denies that audio gear can sound different.

As veteran of 9 medical device startups with 6-7 sham or placebo arm studies, half the patients would get treatment but the other half would get be selected and not treated and followed as treated patient. With drugs they would get dose of sugar pills if on the sham side. Two important things to state here. Having the placebo data is only important if there is another group has some difference that is being measured. Second, If the patient knows that that they have 50-50 chance of getting the placebo it alters the outcome that less will have placebo effect or a unexpected benefit. Most studies that have a sham are double blind, that is, those administering and conducting the study do not know which patients got which treatment or anything about the patient until the data is analyzed. Telling someone who is expecting there to be difference and then not having one, tells you absolutely nothing except that people will try ascertain the difference or guess.
Further, when differences are found in such studies improvement criteria is usually defined and must have a low "P Value" statistically unless there is an unexpected or new outcome.
There are meaningful differences in how things sound during playback, unfortunately the profound ones come from how it was recorded a point which seems to be lost by many. Good measurements lead to good sound and cables do nothing.

 

[thecheapseats]

...The frustrating thing is that he did make one enlightened point, that due to a high RF field a cable with a better shield and ferrite filter made a difference, which I think is quite feasible....

a brief moment of clarity randomly tossed into the delusion/insanity...

 

[thecheapseats]

...There is plenty of scientific research in this area (mainly to do with degradation of switching contacts) and lots of measurements.

In a large studio with hundreds of patch cables and "break" sockets, contamination over longish periods can lead to noise and faults. This is quite common, and often a re-plug fixes the issue for a further period, but if not, cleaning the contacts resolved the problem....

yep - that's a real thing - cleaning, checking the plating, burnishing TT patch bay's conn surfaces and 'normals' , oxidation mitigation - simply mandatory... I do it once a year here with well over 3000 conn points... takes a few days...

 

[thecheapseats]

To be fair…nobody lasts to the end of an endless thread…

the "walking dead" of vinyl do... it's quite well documented...

 

[thecheapseats]

Me, too. He wasn't exceptionally rational, either.

Jim

you caught him on the trailing edge of his serotonin uptake inhibitors... or he lost his haldol...

 

[thecheapseats]

I've read somewhere that this phenomenon is behind a lot, maybe most of "veils lifted" from cable upgrades. It's not that the cable was actually any better, it's that you finally broke up the (audibly harmful) layer of oxidation by moving your cables for the first time in 8 years.

THAT^^^ is a real thing...

 

[Soria Moria]

Is your avatar from Silent Hill?

It’s from the official OST, so yes.

 

[Newman]

oh god here we go again

Looks like killdozer was right

 

[DonR]

Also... relay contacts. My AVR is 2db down on the right channel due to relay contact oxidation. Audyssey compensates but still.