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What cables do you use in your systems?

AndrovichIV

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BlueJeans did some measurements on Canare and Belden.
Is this what you meant?
https://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/humrejection.htm

Good info in general,
https://www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/index.htm

I think the issue with these measures is that they're difficult to interpret:

hum rejection > AMP output > subjective change in listening (psycoacoustics)
The test that I proposed in the previous test would do away with the first part of the test and just focus on the effect of RCA's on AMP output
 

SIY

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Okay I was thinking something like: put DAC "A" connect it to AMP "B" using RCA cables "C", "D", "E",...., etc. Then measure THD + N. Subtract the group mean. The result would be the contribution of the RCA cables to THD + N relative to the group mean

This is like weighing the captain of an aircraft carrier by weighing the carrier with the captain on board, weighing the carrier without the captain on board, then subtracting.
 

GGroch

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I think the issue with these measures is that they're difficult to interpret:
hum rejection > AMP output > subjective change in listening (psycoacoustics).....

Blue Jeans test involved at least some double-blind listening...so perhaps objective listening. To their credit, they focused on audible differences***** as heard through speakers. MANY sophisticated cable manufacturing shills do measurements. PSAudio's $$$ power cables are all noise sniffer approved. The problem is that they do not do anything that is audible at the speakers in a well designed system. PSAudio never tests that.

****BUT - look at the hoops Blue Jeans jumped through to make differences in EMI noise rejection audible. They "put together twenty-foot interconnects.... and "strapped them all tightly to a heavy-duty extension cord. We plugged in the extension cord, and plugged a space heater into its outlet to get a significant current flow running through the cord." This of course, does not simulate normal home usage.

I am not criticizing BJC on this. They were not trying to prove a realistic use case benefit, but rather to determine which cable design is ultimately superior for rejecting EMI. They also note that RFI results may be different.

I am certain the same would be true of the THD+N test that you propose. If your test equipment is sensitive enough it may find minuscule differences. But those differences would be far below human audibility, unless, like BJC, you ran extremely long lengths and strapped them to a noise source.

So perhaps such a test would be interesting from a theoretical perspective, but it would not provide guidance in terms of real world use.
 

AndrovichIV

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Blue Jeans test involved at least some double-blind listening...so perhaps objective listening. To their credit, they focused on audible differences***** as heard through speakers. MANY sophisticated cable manufacturing shills do measurements. PSAudio's $$$ power cables are all noise sniffer approved. The problem is that they do not do anything that is audible at the speakers in a well designed system. PSAudio never tests that.

****BUT - look at the hoops Blue Jeans jumped through to make differences in EMI noise rejection audible. They "put together twenty-foot interconnects.... and "strapped them all tightly to a heavy-duty extension cord. We plugged in the extension cord, and plugged a space heater into its outlet to get a significant current flow running through the cord." This of course, does not simulate normal home usage.

I am not criticizing BJC on this. They were not trying to prove a realistic use case benefit, but rather to determine which cable design is ultimately superior for rejecting EMI. They also note that RFI results may be different.

I am certain the same would be true of the THD+N test that you propose. If your test equipment is sensitive enough it may find minuscule differences. But those differences would be far below human audibility, unless, like BJC, you ran extremely long lengths and strapped them to a noise source.

So perhaps such a test would be interesting from a theoretical perspective, but it would not provide guidance in terms of real world use.

But it might finally provide evidence that RCA's don't matter, like the type of evidence Amir produced showing that USB cables don't matter ;)
 

StevenEleven

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I have “generic” RCA and USB and speaker cables that don’t cost much and don’t quite look like junk and are long enough for what I need them for. I try to make sure the HDMI cables are the latest type.
 

Sal1950

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I have “generic” RCA and USB and speaker cables that don’t cost much and don’t quite look like junk and are long enough for what I need them for. I try to make sure the HDMI cables are the latest type.
But are they KOSHER? :)
 

Krunok

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This is like weighing the captain of an aircraft carrier by weighing the carrier with the captain on board, weighing the carrier without the captain on board, then subtracting.

LOOL :D
 

AndrovichIV

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Hum I was thinking more about: "Take your best measurable DAC. Connect it with cable A, B, C etc to Audio Precision and measure if it does something"

I don't think that's good enough, because we only care what a RCA cable does to the AMP output. It's not relevant what it does to the AMP input.
 

VintageFlanker

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I don't think that's good enough, because we only care what a RCA cable does to the AMP output. It's not relevant what it does to the AMP input.
I'm confused... I'd say the AMP does something to its own output. As the differences should be really tiny (if none) out of the DAC, I don't expect much out of the amp... No need to measure DACs output as well then?
By the way I'm not pride, but I use Atlas Cables for almost all my system.
 
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zalive

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But it might finally provide evidence that RCA's don't matter, like the type of evidence Amir produced showing that USB cables don't matter ;)

The thing with all this measurement evidence is that it suggests 'measurement didn't show there's evidence of influence/correlatioon of...'-
So, possibly there is some other measurement which would show, but it just wasn't performed, because the influence is related to some other phenomena.
Then, the 'it's not audible' cathegory. The same applies.
DBT results didn't show it's audible. So possibly there's imperfection related to DBT methodology, samples used...and the consequence was that DBT was not sensitive enough to confirm the audible nuances.

I simply state that when there's a number of people claiming we did hear a difference and it's like this and that, to me, it should be taken seriously. Not as any evidence but as a sign that the whole subject should be researched further, and that current position should not be necessarily taken as something written in stone, without a possibility that furhter scientific discoveries will change the point of view in certain aspects.

I've read or heard about many audio designers who take quite seriously feedback from their customers. Maybe they can't always understand from the objective perspective what happens when a certain feedback is negative (or not too thrilled) about the sound, but they don't either dismiss the whole feedback as a biased nonsense. Especially if they discover that the number of listeners are telling them some similar things regarding their listening impressions with the gear.
 

Sal1950

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I simply state that when there's a number of people claiming we did hear a difference and it's like this and that, to me, it should be taken seriously. Not as any evidence but as a sign that the whole subject should be researched further, and that current position should not be necessarily taken as something written in stone, without a possibility that furhter scientific discoveries will change the point of view in certain aspects.
The same ole jabber I've heard for decades when there's not a bit of supporting evidence. They hear a difference so the science must be lacking.
If you ask the entire audience at a David Copperfield show it the 747 disappeared off the runway and they'll all tell you yes. Should we take them seriously too? Their very fallible senses were fooled and the same goes for the large majority of these audiophool claims.
How many more decades of scientific investigation (or lack of) on these debates will it take before most of it is recognized as BS caused by the various bias's involved. If you close your eyes and the differences disappear what's left?
 

AndrovichIV

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The thing with all this measurement evidence is that it suggests 'measurement didn't show there's evidence of influence/correlatioon of...'-
So, possibly there is some other measurement which would show, but it just wasn't performed, because the influence is related to some other phenomena.
Then, the 'it's not audible' cathegory. The same applies.
DBT results didn't show it's audible. So possibly there's imperfection related to DBT methodology, samples used...and the consequence was that DBT was not sensitive enough to confirm the audible nuances.

I simply state that when there's a number of people claiming we did hear a difference and it's like this and that, to me, it should be taken seriously. Not as any evidence but as a sign that the whole subject should be researched further, and that current position should not be necessarily taken as something written in stone, without a possibility that furhter scientific discoveries will change the point of view in certain aspects.

I've read or heard about many audio designers who take quite seriously feedback from their customers. Maybe they can't always understand from the objective perspective what happens when a certain feedback is negative (or not too thrilled) about the sound, but they don't either dismiss the whole feedback as a biased nonsense. Especially if they discover that the number of listeners are telling them some similar things regarding their listening impressions with the gear.

That point can be made of science in general, because you can't prove a negative. You can only reject hypothesis.

The point here is that if a cable doesn't improve the AMP performance (which can be measured), then it doesn't do anything to improve the sound quality. Period.
 

solderdude

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Improving sound seems impossible.
By the promise of cables sounding 'better' (different) than others it must be so that all cables always degrade the sound (in a strangely similar way) except the 'good ones' as these degrade the sound less and the best ones (they MUST be expensive) do not degrade this at all.

Funnily enough I actually read the thesis above a couple of time written by cable believers.
It would be convenient for believers if it actually worked that way.

b.t.w. I use home made RCA cables using microphone cables. Sometimes generic ones have no or poor shielding which one finds out when they break and you want to put a new connector on it.
No particular brand nor special (expensive) connectors.
I did have access to expensive cables from my work (long ago) and tested them.
This is why I only use cheap homemade interlinks made to the correct size.
 
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zalive

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That point can be made of science in general, because you can't prove a negative. You can only reject hypothesis.

The point here is that if a cable doesn't improve the AMP performance (which can be measured), then it doesn't do anything to improve the sound quality. Period.

Absolutely true.
However if something works it works. Science and engineering produced it. They proved and explained the existing phenomena, then made use of it.
It's not important if you can't prove whether something doesn't exist.

As for cables, it was never about whether they improve anything. This view can only be wrong. No cable is the best cable possible. Question was whether they can degrade. So if you hypothetically switch to a cable which degrades less, it will mean an improvement in sound even if cable itself didn't improve anything.
 

zalive

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Improving sound seems impossible.
By the promise of cables sounding 'better' (different) than others it must be so that all cables always degrade the sound (in a strangely similar way) except the 'good ones' as these degrade the sound less and the best ones (they MUST be expensive) do not degrade this at all.

Funnily enough I actually read the thesis above a couple of time written by cable believers.
It would be convenient for believers if it actually worked that way.

b.t.w. I use home made RCA cables using microphone cables. Sometimes generic ones have no or poor shielding which one finds out when they break and you want to put a new connector on it.
No particular brand nor special (expensive) connectors.
I did have access to expensive cables from my work (long ago) and tested them.
This is why I only use cheap homemade interlinks made to the correct size.

I didn't tell you another story from the subjective experience side :D

So I possess few LAT IC's. One is from some audiophile exchange which happened over 20 years ago. I was so-so satisfied with it. It seemed to get good extremes, both tight, rythmic and deep bass and extended highs, yet the timbre was not good on that one. Music with it sounded bit coldish and too 'technical' and less 'emotional' compared to few other candidates. The second one is more recent, bought through SH market. It's a model above the former. I was actually very pleased with the sound while using that one, I considered it then the best IC I have (it was the most expensive of mine too so no wonder :D lol). The IC's had a different in RCA's too: the first one had heavy locking RCA's. The latter had Eichmann Bullets. In construction, the latter is bigger gauge conductor (not sure how much, possibly twice), quad instead of a twisted pair, both shielded in a similar manner.

However as I used some StarLine RCA's for some other purpose (was making digital COAX with them), I decided to experiment by changing those heavy locking RCA's with Starline RCA's, so I did. This old IC collected dust in my drawer anyway so I thought heck why not...I'm interested in a result. So what was the result from the subjective perspective? The cable improved - I expected that. What I didn't expect is that sound actually got full timbre with Starline RCA's, lost the coldness, and somehow became familiar to the more expensive LAT IC. Wow. It didn't completely feel the same but the difference got to a point when I really had to think which I preferred between the two. Like the older LAT was pronouncing the bass extension (in fact both extensions), while the newer LAT was bit gentler in the highs with bit less sibilance. But the overal difference not really big. This is what I didn't have in my bias when I expected a possible result: a possibility that connectors might be more decisive to the sound than the wire itself!

Yeah, I will blind test it one day, at least with the cables it's really simple to do it. I will report a result when I do it, only I suspect if I succeed to recognize the difference in a blind test each time, no one (or almost no one) here will believe in those results anyway :D
 
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andreasmaaan

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I didn't tell you another story from the subjective experience side :D

So I possess few LAT IC's. One is from some audiophile exchange which happened over 20 years ago. I was so-so satisfied with it. It seemed to get good extremes, both tight, rythmic and deep bass and extended highs, yet the timbre was not good on that one. Music with it sounded bit coldish and too 'technical' and less 'emotional' compared to few other candidates. The second one is more recent, bought through SH market. It's a model above the former. I was actually very pleased with the sound while using that one, I considered it then the best IC I have (it was the most expensive of mine too so no wonder :D lol). The IC's had a different in RCA's too: the first one had heavy locking RCA's. The latter had Eichmann Bullets. In construction, the latter is bigger gauge conductor (not sure how much, possibly twice), quad instead of a twisted pair, both shielded in a similar manner.

However as I used some StarLine RCA's for some other purpose (was making digital COAX with them), I decided to experiment by changing those heavy locking RCA's with Starline RCA's, so I did. This old IC collected dust in my drawer anyway so I thought heck why not...I'm interested in a result. So what was the result from the subjective perspective? The cable improved - I expected that. What I didn't expect is that sound actually got full timbre with Starline RCA's, lost the coldness, and somehow became familiar to the more expensive LAT IC. Wow. It didn't completely feel the same but the difference got to a point when I really had to think which I preferred between the two. Like the older LAT was pronouncing the bass extension (in fact both extensions), while the newer LAT was bit gentler in the highs with bit less sibilance. But the overal difference not really big. This is what I didn't have in my bias when I expected a possible result: a possibility that connectors might be more decisive to the sound than the wire itself!

Yeah, I will blind test it one day, at least with the cables it's really simple to do it. I will report a result when I do it, only I suspect if I succeed to recognize the difference in a blind test each time, no one (or almost no one) here will believe in those results anyway :D

Expectation bias is not the only psychological phenomenon that makes sighted subjective experiences unreliable.

The fact that you experienced a difference you didn’t expect is not evidence that the experience is not the result of psychological factors (which is what you seem to be implying?).
 
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zalive

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Expectation bias is not the only psychological phenomenon that makes sighted subjective experiences unreliable.

The fact that you experienced a difference you didn’t expect is not evidence that the experience is not the result of psychological factors (which is what you seem to be implying?).

It's not the evidence, but from personal perspective it doesn't fit in a picture of a bias deciding the outcome.
 
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