They say speaker cables do not matter ..

[SIY]

Not the controls, the "blind test". It is a catch phrase that can neither be proven nor disproven unless both parties are listening to the same thing. Most of the deniers never listened to compare anyway, and so the "blind test" phrase comes very handy.

Blind IS a control. Either you’re trolling or you lack even an elementary understanding of sensory science. The latter can be fixed if you’re willing to put in some study. The former is just pitiful.

 

[solderdude]

Paul McGowan is hardly a layman and he hears, according to him, the differences quite well.

Acc. to himself... sure.. is he selling anything b.t.w. promoting his own cables and devices ?

Rather convincingly.

He seems to tell the truth up to the point when he says,... 'weellllll'. Waht follows is nonsense his audience likes to hear and technical people will laugh at in general.

Rather convincingly.

Why certain components, although done to the same specs do sound different from each other in a given setup can not often be measured, as it seems. [/QUOTE]

It only seems to be so to people which have no or little idea what measurements and nulling does.

One finds one explanation to it, the other thinks he defeated it by putting up something else and the circle goes on. Both are good and quite interesting as shown, but which is more true that the other - remains open.

It doesn't remain open in the eyes of technical people. It only remains a mystery to those who found it a mystery before.

 

[Frank Dernie]

No one can, it is a catch phrase.

What I did was got my daughter to change cables whilst I did not look, so it was blind in that sense, not a catch phrase.
Having been well paid but busy until I retired my listening tests had been superficial or "long term" which I now know give bad results.
I had quite a few different cables, from adequate gauge wire off the reel bought from electrical suppliers, via normal budget speaker cable to expensive stuff from Goldmund and MIT.
When tested this way, with me not knowing which I was listening to and volume matched by not touching the volume control between tests, any difference I might have thought I could hear turned out not to exist.
Subsequently I haven't changed anything in my HiFi for 3 or 4 years yet I still think I hear "improvements" some days, which I would, in the old days, have put down to long term listening revealing the improvement of a new item. But there haven't been any, so it can't have been.
I subsequently learned our aural memory is too unreliable and short to make a trustworthy comparison apart from in the short term, which explains the error I had been making for decades.

 

[egellings]

Why such a big stink about cable sound? The differences in cable sounds will be so small that just turning your head a bit or shifting your sitting position in the room will have a far larger effect. It's like worrying about a drop of blood on your scratched thumb while being completely oblivious to the blood escaping your slashed carotid artery.

 

[ahofer]

I have done speaker cable blind tests. I just had my son re-wire the system and not tell me which cable he ran. Much easier than other electronics since level-matching is not an issue. I suppose I could also have invested in a switching box, and having rapid switching might have improved my odds (given known facts about auditory memory).

But honestly, once you do it the simple way a few times, the scales fall rapidly from your...ears. It's astonishing and humiliating how you hear differences right up until you don't know which cable is in the system.

Just a reminder for newcomers pushing these rather worn ideas (whether genuine or under false flag):

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/catalogue-of-blind-tests.8675/

 

[sngreen]

Convincingly? How? So he'd probably won't have issues doing a bind test then, will he?
Like magic? There is a simple mechanism to test this: a double-blind test.

Which is what he says. It is quite easy to recognize what you know already.

 

[sngreen]

Grandpa Paul also sells these kind of cables, he's full of it in several ways, too. Good luck with what many call BS Audio....

I was already told that Nelson Pass designs crappy amplifiers, on this very same thread.

 

[sngreen]

Sure he does... At least he says it rather convincingly.
Seems like it would be easy to demonstrate it with a properly controlled blind test. Especially given how obvious it is and all...
Edit: If it can be heard, it can be measured. So far, there is zero actual evidence otherwise, despite the many claims to the contrary.

Can you measure flat sound vs. layered? - How?

 

[BDWoody]

Can you measure flat sound vs. layered? - How?

First it has to be shown it can be reliably heard/identified. That means controls and all that boring stuff.

Until then it's all part of the audio buzzword bingo game.

 

[ahofer]

I was already told that Nelson Pass designs crappy amplifiers, on this very same thread.

There are a LOT of snake oil merchants in this business. I would not put Nelson Pass in that group. He does sell *intentionally colored* amp designs, but he is transparent about engineering for that result. He also made some obtainable and solid amp designs for Adcom*, so good on him. Some people think the frequency aberrations and harmonic distortion make it crap, I'd say it's a preference, although there are better, less expensive, and defeatable, ways to get it, if you want it. So it's overpriced, IMO.

PS Audio, however, is clearly selling claims they can't back up. Furthermore, they double down on those claims in videos like that (see the thread and testing here about their top-of-the-line DAC). That earns them some well-deserved contempt.

*one thing I don't like is that those designs, in very powerful amps, have very little protection for your speakers.

 

[mansr]

Can you measure flat sound vs. layered? - How?

What does that even mean?

 

[egellings]

"Layered" is a subjective descriptor of how musicians put their sound together. It's not meant to describe an electrically caused effect. Flat has a better chance at being electrically descriptive, since it just means that voltage stays the same over frequency.

 

[0bs3rv3r]

Flat has a better chance at being electrically descriptive, since it just means that voltage stays the same over frequency.

Except I'll bet that is NOT what that poster meant when he compared it to layered. He probably meant "unlayered", an equally useless term in thios context.

 

[Chrispy]

I was already told that Nelson Pass designs crappy amplifiers, on this very same thread.

If you want one of his designs, go for it. Not particularly attractive IMO.

 

[GXAlan]

There are a LOT of snake oil merchants in this business. I would not put Nelson Pass in that group. He does sell *intentionally colored* amp designs, but he is transparent about engineering for that result..

Gramophone Dreams #26: Nelson Pass & Harmonic Distortion | Stereophile.com
This is a good article.

It is telling that Nelson Pass uses Radio Shack cables for his work.

 

[GimeDsp]

In order to perceive minute variation you need need a proper room. I mean a properly set up mastering/mixing room that is neutral for decay and tone.

In a normal listening room early and late reflections, those things that make music good to listen to will smear the time domain and cause comb filtering to such an extant that you would need a major change to hear it. THIS IS WHY studios pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to hear real life minute changes.

If such changes could be heard in normal rooms they wouldn't need to spend the money.

BUT any cable person can send one in to be tested.

 

[preload]

Keep R. L and C reasonably low, and it's a done deal as far as speaker cables go. It's not hard to do.

It is. Low L topologies tend to be high C and vice versa. Unless your amp is susceptible to oscillation, low L prioritizes flatter FR, though the difference is prob not audible.

Cable threads are fun. Can't wait for the op to do a blinded test and realize he can't actually hear a difference. Get a friend to help switch the cables.

 

[sngreen]

If you are genuinely interested into better sound in your home, stay here. If this is a subtle trolling attempt then .. You may succeed but won't last long. Either way, you're wrong. Numbers tell the story.
Peace

Unfortunately numbers do not tell the story, and most people in the universe do know it. Better components, as an example, will more often than not give more pleasing and enjoyable results than their cheaper alternatives. It goes for capacitors, resistors, inductors .. and to no exception cables. There is a lot of what they call a snake oil out there, there is no argument about it, but disregarding by numbers is not the way to compare what the orchestra sounds like. Not all measured by numbers and seemingly identical things are the same, I find it rather silly to argue otherwise.

 

[sngreen]

What I did was got my daughter to change cables whilst I did not look, so it was blind in that sense, not a catch phrase.
Having been well paid but busy until I retired my listening tests had been superficial or "long term" which I now know give bad results.
I had quite a few different cables, from adequate gauge wire off the reel bought from electrical suppliers, via normal budget speaker cable to expensive stuff from Goldmund and MIT.
When tested this way, with me not knowing which I was listening to and volume matched by not touching the volume control between tests, any difference I might have thought I could hear turned out not to exist.
Subsequently I haven't changed anything in my HiFi for 3 or 4 years yet I still think I hear "improvements" some days, which I would, in the old days, have put down to long term listening revealing the improvement of a new item. But there haven't been any, so it can't have been.
I subsequently learned our aural memory is too unreliable and short to make a trustworthy comparison apart from in the short term, which explains the error I had been making for decades.

No kidding! I heard some retirees who can no longer hear the hiss from their cassette decks see it as a benefit, now they enjoy pure music. With stories like this why do you even bother posting?

 

[sngreen]

In order to perceive minute variation you need need a proper room. I mean a properly set up mastering/mixing room that is neutral for decay and tone.

In a normal listening room early and late reflections, those things that make music good to listen to will smear the time domain and cause comb filtering to such an extant that you would need a major change to hear it. THIS IS WHY studios pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to hear real life minute changes.

If such changes could be heard in normal rooms they wouldn't need to spend the money.

BUT any cable person can send one in to be tested.

This is correct to some degree, except the point is not to test and recognized that something sounds good but to test and observe if there are differences. Unless the rooms are changed it should make no difference in the outcome.