cheeseboy said:
Personally I prefer indisputable evidence, but I haven't seen anything to date to put the evidence offered by either side beyond all doubt.
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Personally I prefer indisputable evidence, but I haven't seen anything to date to put the evidence offered by either side beyond all doubt.
spiny norman said:
🙂 doh for the mistake.
Either way, for exmaple, there's now quite a few articles on HDMI cables using either calibration equipment or capture cards that have proven there is no difference between HDMI cables, yet there are still articles in various AV mags and by cable sellers promoting the opposite.
But then again, I guess from a personal point of view, that would depend on what evidence you would require to put it beyond all doubt.
EDIT: Just to be clear, my comment was meant as reply to tinkywinky's and and a possible reason where there are more and more people on this so called "crusade" against what they consider to be snake oil. Not to actually get in to the nitty gritty of it.
cheeseboy said:
Point taken, and at least some of them seem openly proud to be unscientific and fly in the face of the evidence: maddening, isn't it?
The point about the fact that digital cables can be scientifically tested is an interesting one, several manufacturers, including one very highly regarded on this forum, have been censured by the ASA for making unsubstantiated claims about digital cables.
spiny norman said:
yup, totally agree 🙂 I guess from a personal point of view, I'm actually more interested in the psychological side of things for example - the article you linked to - why somebody who's career is based on science that has managed to produce the equipment (electronics, computers etc), yet then does a complete 360 on that very same science, whilst admiting they don't know much about it, but they don't want to believe a certain part of it. I find it quite fascinating to be honest.
cheeseboy said:
I think if I seemed to see/hear differences others said were impossible I'd be curious why that should be so, and would do all I could to find out a) the reasons why I perceived those differences in the face of the evidence or b) the scientific reasons why there could be differences.
I guess that would be an obvious natural curiosity and a wish to expand my understanding of the subject about which I was writing, but perhaps the author of that piece has neither the time nor the inclination for this.
QuestForThe13thNote said:
I'd like to quote the above as an example of audiophool drivel. Signal words in audiophool drivel are "massive difference", "in a bass heavy piece of music the instrumentation was slightly lost" and "better presentation overall".
If there was such a big difference, one of the cables tried was faulty.
andyjm said:
I don't 'review evidence', but in my reading I've have seen there are two sides to the story, and it's not as black and white as 'right or audiophool'.
spiny norman said:
Spiny, one of the problems of the internet and modern media generally is it difficult to gauge the reliability of the information. If you and I met, I was wearing a tin foil hat, jumped around a lot and in between discussing cables talked about the aliens at the bottom of my garden, you might wonder about the reliability of my opinion. Equally, if I had a fancy lab at Imperial College, test equipment stacked to the ceiling and a nice white labcoat you might have another opinion. On the internet you can never tell.
A case in point is the Andrew Wakefield MMR scandal, where an ignorant and uncritical media gave equal weight to a discredited study and the consensus advice of the entire medical profession. It is possible that people have died as a result of the confusion.
In the case of digital cables, there is no discussion, no mystery or confusion. There aren't two sides to the story. There is an engineering body of knowledge regarding the transfer of digital information along a cable. This is characterised by bit error rates, eye diagrams and error correction protocols. It is fully understood.
I am afraid the only ones trying to say that there are two sides either:
1. Have a financial axe to grind as they want to sell you something
2. Don't understand the engineering.
I have a similar set up , pre dac QX, 2 x power in mono, PSX-r and pmc 22's as well as a smaller cyrus 8 QX , kef r100 and after a lot of different experiments I found the best for the type of music I like is the chord company signature
andyjm said:
But people really do hear differences between cables. Some even hear them in blind tests. The engineering explanation is insufficient to explain what is going on and why.
I look forward to your link to a properly conducted blind test of digital cables where listeners could reliably differentiate between cables.
hg said:
Apparently that statement means you either
1. Have a financial axe to grind as you want to sell me something
2. Don't understand the engineering.
;-)
Seriously, I can't understand why those who've read some stuff on the internet and have formed an objectivist/objectionalist opinion are so closed-minded. They keep coming out with the 'facts are facts' argument, when actually, the truly scientific mind would surely say 'this is how we understand it right now, and within the limits of our current knowledge, but of course we are willing to be proved/have it demonstrated to us that we are wrong.'
If all scientists thought in as black and white manner as some of the people contributing to threads like this, we would have no advances in engineering, medicine, space exploration...
andyjm said:
That was not what was said. What was said was that some can hear differences between cables under blind conditions not that they could identify cables under blind conditions. Hearing differences between cables is real.
hg said:
Ah, but where's your proof? Where's your link?? After all, if it's on the internet, that means it must be true... ;-)
hg said:
One needs to be careful when making sweeping statements such as this. Which cables? What blind tests? for example.
Most people on here agree that say you are likely to find difference in speaker cables for examples. However, when you carry out a blind test, those differences can become so minute that you have to strain to hear any difference, which is not how we listen to music. Also, sometimes in blind tests, yes people hear a difference, but all of sudden can't pick out which is which.
There are plenty of explantions, including expectation bias and the placebo effect which explain *exactly* why people hear differences. It's just that people seem to get upset when this is suggested as if they've suddnely just been told they have something wrong in their head - no they don't - it's just the way the human brain works and there's nothing you can do about it. Why are people happy to accept optical illusions, yet when a similar suggestion is made about hifi they suddenly go all defensive? Just because somebody suggest a placebo, doesn't mean that they aren't suggesting that you are making stuff up - take this as a case example http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/health/research/05placebo.html?_r=0 - Both given the same pill, however the ones who were told it was more expensive believed that they received better pain relief.
Even most skeptics will have heard differences when changing cables. The engineering side can tell us if there is a real world difference or not, then it's up to the end user to decide if the cost of the item they are buying is worth it to them, but a lot of people fall in to the trap (possibly buyers remorse) to defend the science (or psudeoscience) of that thing, even if there is evidence to prove there is no real world difference. so for example, as stated earlier about HDMI cables - we can prove there are no differences, yet people will scream black and blue that there are, simply because they can see them. That's fine, i'd never dispute that you can see a difference, all I'm saying is that the cable itself is not causing anything on the screen to change.
After all, the power of suggestion is a very strong thing, and advertising relies on this, otherwise companies such as coke for example, wouldn't spend the amount they do on advertising.
spiny norman said:
well nordost claim faster than light transmissions on their cables - must be true as it says so on their website ;-) (tongue in cheek for those that missed that)
spiny norman said:
I agree, but to play devils advocate for a second - as of yet, proof of some of the "night and day" claims have yet to proven. And by that I don't mean the "trust your ears" response.
I for one would welcome it if anybody could actualy prove under scientific conditions some of the claims made. But then you could also turn it the other way and say why are people who have had it demostrated to them that they are wrong, still choose to believe?
cheeseboy said:
Yes, but surely most sensible people could differentiate between marketing claims and what purports to be an investigative examination of a subject?
spiny norman said:
I'd agree, if this wasn't talking about hifi people ;-) The fact they make the claim in the first place says quite a lot about their target audice i feel 🙂
cheeseboy said:
Thank heavens there are so many selfless self-appointed saviours to protect the poor, stupid and feeble-minded from themselves, eh? (looks for heavy irony emoticon)
spiny norman said:
Hell no, I'm going to set up a cable company, I don't want people getting wise 🙂
edit: I'm actually half serious. For a throwaway example - alibaba http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Kimber-8TC-speaker-audio-cable-banana_60040893143.html then sell on amazon for more than double.... http://www.amazon.com/Kimber-Kable-Speaker-Cable-Banana/dp/B002TIA22M
cheeseboy said:
I think you might be going to set up a fake cable company:
"A good rule of thumb is that if you are buying a ‘Kimber Kable’ product that is shipping from Hong Kong or China, it is more than likely fake. Kimber Kable speaker cables and interconnects are produced here in our facility in Ogden, Utah. Anything claiming to ‘ship from the factory overseas’ is simply a ploy to close the sale on these counterfeit goods. We advise customers to only buy from authorized Kimber Dealers. Beware of auction or bid sites, and any site that is shipping from overseas. Once the cable is purchased, there is nothing we can do."
From the Kimber Kable site here
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