Stereophile and Audio Cables

[MattHooper]

I found it interesting that Stereophile recently published a short review of some audio cables - written by Herb Reichert.

Gramophone Dreams #82: IKIGAI Kangai-level cables, dCS Lina headphone amplifier

Decades ago, when I was peddling million-dollar sound systems, an astute potential customer asked me: "If I buy your very expensive system, what will I get that I'm not getting with my less expensive system?" Smiling my best fatherly smile, I whispered to his ear, "Goosebumps, tears, and...

www.stereophile.com

Cable reviews at one point became very rare at Stereophile and I've long wondered why. First of all cables were never accompanied by measurements as there were for DACs, Amps, Phono Stages, Speakers. When I put that together with the general lack of cable reviews in the magazine, my suspicion was that John Atkinson generally didn't think that measuring cables was worthwhile, and that cable reviews weren't really something they wanted to concentrate on.

So it was interesting to see a cable review pop up, and also see the response in the comment section. Archimago brought his skeptical take, but also JA gave a detailed reply suggesting that there were a number of at least technically plausible ways cables could sound different.

I'm just not knowledgeable enough to vet all the claims, and I consider myself a cable skeptic (unless more evidence arises justifying some of the high end audio claims).
But I did appreciate a reply from JA that doesn't mirror the classic subjectivist/golden ear response of "if you can't hear it, you are deaf or you need a more resolving system."
Right or wrong in the claims, JA had the right approach to the challenging Archimago's post, IMO.

My point is not to simply dangling this cable review as read meat for ASR (though of course the claims will be critiqued). Part of this post is meant as some appreciation for JA, and also just musing on the magazine's relationship to reviewing cables (and why). I still enjoy Stereophile, I enjoy Herb's reviews (speakers mostly), and I have huge respect for JA (and I think he's a valuable member here too) even if I don't agree fully with him on everything.

 

[Beave]

I've been waiting for that discussion to show up here.

JA's list of "technically plausible" cable concerns strikes me as an embarrassing Gish Gallop of FUD.

There. I said it.

 

[Keith_W]

When I put that together with the general lack of cable reviews in the magazine, my suspicion was that John Atkinson generally didn't think that measuring cables was worthwhile

Of course it's worthwhile, only it may not have the intended outcome. I doubt if the Stereophile editorial board thought it was a good idea to have 2 pages of flowery prose about a cable, only to be followed by 1/2 a page of measurements by JA showing that the reviewer had imagined the whole thing.

 

[GD Fan]

Third paragraph was as far as I could go.

Sorry.

 

[Beave]

Third paragraph was as far as I could go.

Sorry.

The comments on the article are far more interesting than the article itself, if one considers watching a train wreck interesting.

 

[JSmith]

The article is rather pointless... there are no measurements, only subjective opinions;

None of the above-mentioned products are inexpensive. But they are all spectacular performers, mindfully engineered to extract extraordinary amounts of low-signal truth and make listening to recordings intense and pleasurable.

I encourage all readers to audition every headphone, amp, and wire I've discussed in this article. And while you're doing that, watch out for goosebumps, tears, and laughter, because that's how you'll know if they can please for the long haul.

Try every amp and wire discussed? Nup...


JSmith

 

[MattHooper]

Of course it's worthwhile, only it may not have the intended outcome. I doubt if the Stereophile editorial board thought it was a good idea to have 2 pages of flowery prose about a cable, only to be followed by 1/2 a page of measurements by JA showing that the reviewer had imagined the whole thing.

Is that really much different than the situation reviewers can find themselves in reviewing any other product JA measures, from Speakers, to DACs, amplifiers etc?

 

[Beave]

I hadn't looked at it in over a week. There were a handful of comments then. There are now over 120.

I can only imagine what it has devolved into.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Nothing JA wrote has any merit for audio cables. Early radar needs and audio one of your typical misdirections. Invoking Brandoliniis Law so not bothering to reply to each point. If JA believes this crap, JA needs to measure the effects and show them. He knows he cannot and therefore won't. Just trying sow some semi-plausible FUD out there he is.

 

[JiiPee]

If I understood correctly, JA did not claim that his "six points" do absolutely mean that cables create audible differences, just that there might be a case where they do that, and that the differences, even if they existed, would be very small. I think the best way to proof /refute the audibility of his suggested effects is a properly controlled blind test participated by large enough group of audiophiles who claim that they can hear the differences.

I know that there are practical, financial etc... reasons that make arranging such event far from trivial, and I understand that blind tests have already been done before, but I still feel that widely published results of such test might do good for our hobby.

 

[VintageFlanker]

I do think there isn't much to understand once you see the home page :

Home Page

Stereophile covers everything high-end and audiophile audio. Turntables and music servers, to solid-state and tube amplifiers and preamps, to loudspeakers.

www.stereophile.com

Four ads for cable companies (two for CrystalCable, one for Nordost, one for Wireworld), already...

I hardly imagine they would want to offend some of their advertisers. That's all.

Edit: I said "four", but there's another two more if you scroll down :

 

[MattHooper]

Four ads for cable companies (two for CrystalCable, one for Nordost, one for Wireworld), already...

I hardly imagine they would want to offend some of their advertisers. That's all.

I'm not sure about this point. Stereophile rarely reviews cables. Why would Stereophile not review cables much at all in order to not offend their cable advertisers?
If they reviewed cables there's just as much possibility of positive reviews as for any of the gear they review. And even products that don't measure well show up in the advertisements anyway.

 

[VintageFlanker]

I'm not sure about this point. Stereophile rarely reviews cables. Why would Stereophile not review cables much at all in order to not offend their cable advertisers?

Because Stereophile usually publishes extensive measurements next to reviews. And these will just show that cables are doing absolutely nothing. As you said post #1.

Demonstrating that a product is useless is not exactly the same than showing measurable differences between amps and between speakers.

By the way, Hi-Fi News has a different approach : measurements (by the way quite poor) for just about everything, except for cables... but lot more cable reviews. My personal guess is (purely speculative) that Stereophile readers do have a lot more interest for objective data than Hi-Fi News readers.

 

[pma]

I would rather appreciate if JA tried to find a measuring method to show that audio cables change the signal in the audio band. We can definitely identify the grounding issue related to single ended link transfer, but that is not what the audiophiles are talking about.

 

[StigErik]

I would rather appreciate if JA tried to find a measuring method to show that audio cables change the signal in the audio band.

You want to measure something that doesn’t happen. Good luck with that…..

 

[pma]

You want to measure something that doesn’t happen. Good luck with that…..

No. I want for the one who is educated and experienced to bring the proof, if he says that there can be an audible difference.

 

[JiiPee]

I would rather appreciate if JA tried to find a measuring method to show that audio cables change the signal in the audio band. We can definitely identify the grounding issue related to single ended link transfer, but that is not what the audiophiles are talking about.

I think that would be futile, because subjectivist audiophiles do not care what science, or measurements, say about the audibility of cables. They firmly believe that they hear the differences no matter what, and as far as I can see, the only way to possibly make them change their minds is to make them go through a comprehensive controlled blind test, that shows them to be unable to actually hear any differences.

 

[rdenney]

Graphs of various speaker and electronic equipment attributes at least provide something to look at and evaluate, and gives an opinion review an air of technical credibility.

What would graphs show about cables? Flat line after flat line after flat line. Visually boring. And what would you say? “Yup. Fryburger Electronics speaker cables show 0.000001 dB loss at 45 KHz compared to 12-gauge zip cord…” Not a good story there.

Rick “like a radio show demonstrating silence” Denney

 

[SIY]

No. I want for the one who is educated and experienced to bring the proof, if he says that there can be an audible difference.

"My entire career has been promoting fraud." Yeah, not likely.

All Atkinson has done over the years is demonstrate that he's knowingly doing that rather than doing it from a position of ignorance. But I hand it to him for doing the scam successfully. He's rich and I'm just scraping by on an academic salary, so I'll concede that he's smarter.

 

[pma]

For anyone interested, I have prepared test files for the ABX test with 2 audio cables that are as dissimilar as they could be.

Can you hear a difference between audio cables? ABX test

Following the thread https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/stereophile-and-audio-cables.53011/ I have prepared a listening test with 2 different audio cables. The cables are as dissimilar as they can be. The test files can be downloaded from https://pmacura.cz/cable1-2.zip...

www.audiosciencereview.com