Digital and ethernet cables

[grimharry]

Foil wrapped around a cable I believe will provide shielding but it’s best to Earth one end only

 

[davidf]

To be honest, anybody that believes what they hear in a manufactures demo are just deluding themselves, as without knowing the exact conditions and setup (You would be surprised what manufactures get up to con the public) it’s just not possible know if the difference you are hearing is real or not.

Bill

So when a rep visits your own place of employment, tells you to put a streaming system on, then changes the cables right before your eyes, do you think he’s sabotaging the Ethernet sockets etc while I’m out of the room gathering boxes?

 

[abacus]

Haven’t tried different cables in the last 2 or 3 years, but have tried most of them previously (Probably in the 90s when I first became intrigued) and yes, I heard differences (Some quite markedly) however I never take anything on face value (Particularly when as any doctor will tell you that the human senses are quite poor when it comes to actually identifying things) and always investigate to find out why I heard a difference, in most cases I try the blind test first as this removes the expectation bias and in most cases the differences disappeared, (There has never been any digital cable (From any manufacture) that has passed the blind test) the rest was normally down to resistance, which when people swapped cables without matching the output volume the lower resistance cables (Hence slightly louder volume) sounded better. (These differences disappeared once the volume was level matched)

I have also challenged manufactures to provide verifiable evidence of their claims, and not one has ever done so. (This speaks for itself)

As I have said before if you believe they make a difference, fine, spend your money on them, just don’t make claims you have super hearing and that manufactures can defy the laws of physics without providing verifiable proof.

BTW: If most of you complaining about my post had read it, you would find it is both logical and factual, as that is what I deal in. (A claim made without proof, is just a claim, not a fact and I never accept any claim without proof)

Bill

 

[davedotco]

To be honest, anybody that believes what they hear in a manufactures demo are just deluding themselves, as without knowing the exact conditions and setup (You would be surprised what manufactures get up to con the public) it’s just not possible know if the difference you are hearing is real or not.

Bill

So when a rep visits your own place of employment, tells you to put a streaming system on, then changes the cables right before your eyes, do you think he’s sabotaging the Ethernet sockets etc while I’m out of the room gathering boxes?

You really don't get it do you.

The rep (in this case) does not have to 'sabotage' anything, suggestion bias does the work for him.

Most people, even diehard skeptics, when sitting through such a demo will 'hear' the differences. It is just that having looked into these things and having been around the hi-fi block a few times, they understand what is going on and why.

Hearing people with no discernable education insist that they can 'control' suggestion or expectation bias simply shows the depths of their ignorance.

 

[insider9]

Usually no cable would be best cable, so why would Ethernet cables be better than WiFi?

 

[andyjm]

Not a single technical reason why an ethernet cable could possibly make a difference to audible sound - just the usual 'well you haven't tried it' malarky. Rather what I thought.

Human perecption is dreadfully unreliable - in fields where it actually matters what people perceive (unlike HiFi) the most extraordinary steps have to be taken to ensure that the tests are meaningful. Just google 'double blind test' to find out what drug companies have to do. To put this in context, it was found that it wasn't enough for the patient not to know whether they received a placebo or not, the doctor also had to be unaware - the subconcious cues given by the doctor to the patient were enough to skew the results.

Why anyone on here thinks that they are immune to these effects is beyond me.

So, anyone got a technical reason why changing a properly specified twisted pair cable on an asynchronous, galvanically isolated, differential digital link is going to make any audible difference?

Fun quiz - why do the twisted pairs in an ethernet cable have different rates of twist?

 

[insider9]

It wouldn't be caused by digital delivery. Data is/will be the same. But however you look at it you're connecting an electrical cable to your streamer.

 

[cheeseboy]

It wouldn't be caused by digital delivery. Data is/will be the same. But however you look at it you're connecting an electrical cable to your streamer.

rf and mains noise might get through, but that won't manifest as a greater soundstage, tighter bass etc, it'll literally come out as noise on the line.

 

[cheeseboy]

everyone on this forum who doesn't agree with you stupid, I wondered when we would hear from you when the op started this thread with a simple question which again has you spouting your usual cr*p, if you don't have anything good to say then stay out of the thread and let the rest of us have a real discussion.

Why are you posting on a hifi forum, hifi systems use cables, it would be a bit quiet without them so get used to people asking questions about them.

As once again you are calling everyone on here idiots, 80% of a room of people idiots and also in the past What Hifi reviewers idiots, read the HOUSE RULES, I think your breaking quite a few of them.

*aggressive*

you seem to have a real hard on for following abacus around. Unless the house rules state that people are not allowed to have a difference of opinion, maybe you should heed your own advice

 

[cheeseboy]

What I really don’t get is the people who always make their mind up on professed technical reasons it definelty doesn’t make a difference, without hearing, are the first to shout that down. It’s not credible and sometimes it’s incredibly arrogant.

not as arrogant as those who are so wilfully ignorant given that all the technical details for digital transmission is well covered and one can find out exactly how it works, with ways to test said transmission to make sure that what is being sent is identical. I mean it's not like there is a multi billion pound woldwide industry that relies on things like ethernet cables making sure that there are no differences in transmission now is there... oh wait, the internet would like a word

There's mountains of evidence that tell us that sighted tested is so inherently flawed, the brain can very easily be tricked (mcgurk effect for example) yet here we are again with the hifi lot telling us all that because they heard it and did nothing to rule out the biases it must be true. Ho hum. the hubris that lies within this hobby is quite staggering sometimes.

 

[plastic penguin]

Going back to the original question: In you collective opinions, how much of what you hear or don't is down to a placebo effect?

 

[davidf]

Going back to the original question: In you collective opinions, how much of what you hear or don't is down to a placebo effect?

Surely zero, if you’re not expecting to hear a difference.

 

[cheeseboy]

Going back to the original question: In you collective opinions, how much of what you hear or don't is down to a placebo effect?

imho, the only way to start narrowing it down is to start ruling trying to rule out any biases so you can try and discount them. But lets be honest, it's not the most fun thing in the world to do, but unless you do that, they cannot be ruled out.

Although like we've said, with digital, it's possible to prove 100% that what goes in one of the cable, is the exactly the same thats coming out of the other end of the cable. People seem to forget about how robust digital transmission can be... anybody here used to use dial up, all those shitty copper wires, data being turned in to audio then back again, yet still getting the same result. Heck, I could post a song, convert it into base 64 so it looks like a load of garbled text, print it out, physically send it to somebody on a piece of paper, get them to ocr scan it back in when they recieve it and then they can conver back from base 64 in to a digital audio file and it would sound exactly the same, no wires in sight for the transmission

 

[cheeseboy]

Going back to the original question: In you collective opinions, how much of what you hear or don't is down to a placebo effect?

Surely zero, if you’re not expecting to hear a difference.

doesn't work like that.

 

[plastic penguin]

That can work both ways, can't it? If you are dismissive of cables you won't hear any difference. Likewise, if you are a spaghetti believer, you will. Or is this an over simplified view?

 

[davidf]

You really don't get it do you.

Ah, the usual davedotco response.

The rep (in this case) does not have to 'sabotage' anything, suggestion bias does the work for him.

Not if he didn’t suggest anything, and I have no expectations. If he suggested that a cheaper cable sounded better than one at ten times the price, would I expect that and hear it?

 

[cheeseboy]

That can work both ways, can't it? If you are dismissive of cables you won't hear any difference. Likewise, if you are a spaghetti believer, you will. Or is this an over simplified view?

yes, the brain is very complex. Even the slightest cue's can help the brain form conclusions, even if those conclusions are not "real word" if that makes sense? It's not as binary as that.

 

[cheeseboy]

The rep (in this case) does not have to 'sabotage' anything, suggestion bias does the work for him.

Not if he didn’t suggest anything, and I have no expectations. If he suggested that a cheaper cable sounded better than one at ten times the price, would I expect that and hear it?

[/quote]

if he's suggesting a change in cable, the suggestion bias is already active...

(excuse the formatting, this forum is hands down the buggiest pos I've ever used)

 

[davedotco]

Sound or music is simply a variation in sound pressure, the ear is an electro-mechanical device that turns these variations into an electrical signal that is interpreted by the brain.

So everything that you hear is an 'interpretation', not just of the sound pressure data, but data about what you see, what you expect, what your experiences are, how you are feeling etc, etc.

So when you make any kind of a 'judgement' about what you 'hear' you need to understand that this is not based purely on data from your ears but data from all kinds of other 'sources' as well. The more data you bring in to the process, (ie visual data as in sighted vs blind testing) the more likely it is that your 'judgement' will be flawed.

 

[davedotco]

You really don't get it do you.

Ah, the usual davedotco response.

The rep (in this case) does not have to 'sabotage' anything, suggestion bias does the work for him.

Not if he didn’t suggest anything, and I have no expectations. If he suggested that a cheaper cable sounded better than one at ten times the price, would I expect that and hear it?

It is my usual response to anyone arguing about a subject about which they know nothing.

The idea that you can somehow conciously control expectation or suggestion bias shows just how fundamental your lack of understanding is, as indeed does your example regarding the 'cheaper cable'.

 

[davidf]

Of course. I stand corrected...

 

[Andrewjvt]

There is a lot to be said here.

State of mind
Emotions
Images conjured by marketing material
The subconscious
Mood
Stress levels
Time of day
Circadian rhythms
Lots of things that can influence how we hear or enjoy music at the time but can not measure with science but these things are scientific.

All these differences we hear are very hard on blind tests
I've done it and admit to being very hard to tell

 

[QuestForThe13thNote]

Davedotco has a slightly misunderstood and simplified way of the biology of humans, the way our brain and auditory cortex works, the way it’s related to the memory parts of our brain, and explanations of it from a common sense perspective of how we work.

we don’t hear according to what our experiences are, that because I want something to sound better a song or tune will sound better. That would confer a biological evolutionary disadvantage. We need to hear what our environment is doing. To hear what our experiences are confers no advantage nor does it relate to the way we understand our auditory cortex works. We’ve gone into such things as the mcgurk effect before and the contradiction between visual and auditory stimuli, that as humans we take more information from our eyes eg sitting at a train station with the other train moving past us we think we are moving, as whilst the balance centres in the ear which are responsible for detecting movement tell our brain we are not moving, as we are still, our brain interprets the visual stimuli more in preference. Ie the trick.

if you hear a noise it’s compared to the memory structures of the brain and then we know what it is. You may then think you heard a sound of a threat like an animal by a rusting paper bag, but you’ve still heard the paper bag. But we can’t say the same that we want to hear a different noise when these auditory-memory pathway does not exist. If our thinking and other centres effected what we hear, it would be like we are on an acid trip. And your explanation does not consider that and defies all common sense.

now it’s a different thing to say that our brain tricks us to believe one is better, that doesn’t mean it’s effecting our hearing which is a given in all of us if decent, but that we tell ourselves bias comes into it because we want it to, which reading some of the previous posts is clearly what’s going on, ie we believe what we believe regardless of what our auditory centres are telling us. Now that may be true of people hearing a difference but dismissing it, as well as those not hearing a difference and saying their is one. But if you’ve actually sat in on these tests you will realise there are differences, however you want to explain them in science that amateur hi Fi people probably don’t get.

 

[QuestForThe13thNote]

There is a lot to be said here.

State of mind Emotions Images conjured by marketing material The subconscious Mood Stress levels Time of day Circadian rhythms Lots of things that can influence how we hear or enjoy music at the time but can not measure with science but these things are scientific.

All these differences we hear are very hard on blind tests I've done it and admit to being very hard to tell

no the only time you don’t hear as well is at night when asleep. This is because the auditory cortex still gets the sounds from the ear, but it doesn’t transmit them to the conscious parts due to the rem sleep we are in. You are still hearing as well in the auditory cortex in the brain, and that accounts that what we hear whilst asleep can affect our brains.

We cant say that because we are in a different mood or state of mind we hear things differently. That has no basis in science and the real world. We hear the same things. What you are talking about is pretentious h Fi stuff. There may be psychological reasons in the workings of the ear, but not in brain function.

 

[cheeseboy]

Davedotco has a slightly misunderstood and simplified way of the biology of humans, the way our brain and auditory cortex works, the way it’s related to the memory parts of our brain, and explanations of it from a common sense perspective of how we work.

we don’t hear according to what our experiences are, that because I want something to sound better a song or tune will sound better. That would confer a biological evolutionary disadvantage. We need to hear what our environment is doing. To hear what our experiences are confers no advantage nor does it relate to the way we understand our auditory cortex works. We’ve gone into such things as the mcgurk effect before and the contradiction between visual and auditory stimuli, that as humans we take more information from our eyes eg sitting at a train station with the other train moving past us we think we are moving, as whilst the balance centres in the ear which are responsible for detecting movement tell our brain we are not moving, as we are still, our brain interprets the visual stimuli more in preference. Ie the trick.

if you hear a noise it’s compared to the memory structures of the brain and then we know what it is. You may then think you heard a sound of a threat like an animal by a rusting paper bag, but you’ve still heard the paper bag. But we can’t say the same that we want to hear a different noise when these auditory-memory pathway does not exist. If our thinking and other centres effected what we hear, it would be like we are on an acid trip. And your explanation does not consider that and defies all common sense.

now it’s a different thing to say that our brain tricks us to believe one is better, that doesn’t mean it’s effecting our hearing which is a given in all of us if decent, but that we tell ourselves bias comes into it because we want it to, which reading some of the previous posts is clearly what’s going on, ie we believe what we believe regardless of what our auditory centres are telling us. Now that may be true of people hearing a difference but dismissing it, as well as those not hearing a difference and saying their is one. But if you’ve actually sat in on these tests you will realise there are differences, however you want to explain them in science that amateur hi Fi people probably don’t get.

so you admit that the brain is very good at playing tricks, then you basically contradict yourself all because it's suddenly in the hifi realm. Sorry, that's tosh. If you actually read what people are saying, we are saying that yes, we do hear differences, but that there's mountains and mountains of evidence that the differences are caused by the long list of things that say Andrewjvt has mentioned than it actually being the result of a digital cable change. Unless you are willing to go through the rigmarol of trying to remove those biases, you simply cannot rule them out suddenly because it's "hifi". That's quite frankly laughable.