busb said:
Broner said:
I could hear the difference in a cable upgrade in my very first system years ago consisting of a NAD 3020 (the original) so there is no doubt that quality of your components is plenty good enough to show out differences in cables.
And here we are back to what’s really wrong with the way you reason. You
think you
know, because you have switched your cables and you’ve heard a difference. According to yourself, there is even no doubt about it
What’s really tiresome is that people such as the editors of Whatshifi and yourself
don’t seem to grasp the significance of what’s actually scientifically and technologically relevant, nor seem to understand what the limitations and validity are of one’s experience. Furthermore, anyone who hasn’t participated in a properly executed blind test with statistical significance and claims that cables do make an audible difference (between cables with basic adequate specifications), is making a statement that lacks substantiation (obviously, this also applies to you).
People can explain this to you a thousand times, and still you would go back to your basic premise that you won’t dare to question: ‘I’ve heard a difference, so cables do make a difference’.
To me at least, this is one of the most difficult aspects of Hi Fi as a hobby to grasp. The idea that my ears (actually brain) could be easily fooled took me a long time to get. I am guilty of repeating the mantra of "trust your own ears" myself but hell, one's own experience is very powerful so perhaps we should be sympathetic to those who believe this. What else can we suggest to others - just read the (selectively imcomplete) specs?
A week or so back in another thread, a linked YouTube video was debunking audiofoolery & in particular some of the subjective expressions used such as "fast bass" as being meaningless but just how are Hi Fi hobbyists expected to describe certain aspects of how a system sounds without being able to make their own measurements? They can't so quite naturally try describe in terms of their own experience. I personally don't have a problem with that when it describes a particular aspect but I do object to fairly vague phrases such as "having a digital sound".
One or two people here have accused others with some obvious scientific/engineering background as be arrogant which is laughable from those with obviously little to no knowledge! As has been pointed out: many will believe in the engineering that's used to sucessfully design the equipment that (hopefully) allows our musical enjoyment in the first place but want to pick & choose the same widely understood principles that suggest similarly made cables must by definition sound very similar if not identical. Surely those with some rather than little understanding, will have a better idea of any weaknesses in current theory? A good engineer will rarely say something is impossible but will explain why it's improbable.
Great reply! Many people find it extremely difficult to deal with the notion that their experiences could be wrong. When you think you see or hear something clearly, it is hard to accept from somebody else, who hasn't been there with you in your room, listening to your equipment, that you might be wrong. It is indeed something of a challenge to challenge your own experiences.
Nonetheless, there are countless examples where people strongly believe in something which is proven to be wrong. Think about whether praying for somebody who's ill, really works. I believe a significant majority of the people in the US think this works, even though it has been thoroughly researched and if anything, people tend to recover more slowly if they know that someone is praying for them, which is probably due to some kind of performance stress. Or what about near-death experiences where people after which many people can clearly remember that they've seen heaven and Jezus (funnily enough Muslims never tend to see Jezus and Christians never tend to see Muhammed). They have experienced the afterlife for themselves, and there is nothing more convincing than one's own experiences.
I'm not suggesting that believing in an afterlife, dowsing, fairies, etc, is on the same level as believing that there can be audible differences between cables, but the
mechanisms where people value their own experience above proper analytical reasoning and objective facts,
are similar. Mind you, this is not to say that audible differences beteen cables are impossible. Of course, there are different types of cables and it's well established a speaker cable with too high of a resistance can negatively affect the sound.
To take this thing a bit further: the discussions over cables, including all the rich terminology used to described the differences people hear, makes me wonder how much of a difference speakers and amplifiers really make. Please note I'm not saying that they don't make a difference:
not at all. But the same mechanisms that lead people to think there are differences between cables, do not suddenly disappear when one listens to speakers or amplifiers. If anything, I would expect those (psychological) mechanisms to be even stronger, as those products under consideration are also expected to make more of a difference and they are usually the most expensive parts in the setup. Again, I'm not saying that speakers or amplifiers don't make a difference, but if Whathifi hails every new amplifier as a significant evolution, it does make one wonder how poor the amplifiers were 15 years ago (or it makes one wonder if the editors at Whathifi just keep fooling themselves and their readers). With something new, there is always the expectation of something better. Admittedly, it would almost take a cynic to get around that.
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