Home Propeller Head Plaza

Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

[ Follow Ups ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Propeller Head Plaza ]
[ Alert Moderator ]

A couple of problems with that

Your test recommendation is an example of "looking where the light is better"; the test is attempting to look at audibility in a practical manner, but it is invasive.

What do I mean by that?

1) You suggest listening to the cable in a different or artificial context, e.g in the tape loop. Unless the cable is to be applied in a tape loop, you've introduced a variable. Given that the interdependence of source, cable and load is almost certainly a factor in the resulting sound....

2) The act of listening in an attempt to identify differences is a fundamentally different task than listening to music, so you have introduced another variable. Has anyone proven that the results are the same? Are the same parts of the brain exercised?

AFAIK, there are no switching methodologies that have been shown to reliably detect small differences. Much of the debate around the value of ABX as a tool for cable analysis concerns the consistent null results -- which could mean that there are no differences, or that the test fails to find them. Let's face it, the sonic differences in cables tend to be very subtle (despite the claims of enthusiastic audiophiles) so we are going to have to be very careful about test methodologies.

You said:

"If there is no objective measure to determining the quality of a cable, then there is no rational way to select one."

What about the obvious method: which one sounds better? Why is that irrational? It is, after all the the only measure of cable quality. I'm not talking about compensating distortions; I'm talking about "better". Why is it necessary to have an objective measurement framework, other than to facilitate design?

Remember that this thread started from the publication of a link to a set of measurements. My post was to point out that we still don't have a correlation between measurements and sound quality.

Peter

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Atma-Sphere Music Systems, Inc.  

Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
You can not post to an archived thread.

[ Top Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]