Mains cables, lets put an end to this nonsense.

[steve_1979]

Fair question Steve tho with my old ears there would be no point. But why would you? Would it lead to more enjoyment of music or would it make you more obsessed with looking for a holy grail known only to those few golden eared? Do we care that some could hear a little something extra when we can't? First thing would be a good hearing test? Painful here on the fence.

Just out of curiosity really. It would have nothing whatsoever to do with musical enjoyment though, I would just like to try to see if I could do it.

I'm a bit of a geek and find that sort of thing interesting. I'm also quite young and (I think) still have fairly good hearing.

 

[steve_1979]

No need mate, the BS is free. It's the last bastion of the audiomug: "your hearing isn't good enough". Yeah, whatever. It's disinformation of the kind that Isac puts out that gives the hobby a bad name. GIGO indeed.

Yeah ! But look how long it took to prove the Higg-Boson theory. ..............:O

The discovery of the Higgs boson particle needed billions of pounds and the colaboration of scientists, governments and engineering companies to build several particle collider's before the Higgs boson was detected.

All you would need to do to prove that different mains cables can be detected by hearing alone would be for someone to be able to pick them out a statistically significant number of times in a proper scientifically valid blind comparison test. Yet it has never been done.

 

[Paddyfin]

Blimey!!!

This is an argument that can run till doomsday and beyond with only one consibable outcome.....who cares!!!

once you take cables where do you stop, pins on your plug, the cable your house is wired in, the make of your fuse box, the main electric cable coming into your house :wall:

what happened to just enjoying music :cheers:

do you rearly need to squeeze so much from your systems and if so why......

We do not have acoustically correct rooms and we do not live in an ideal world

what ever next.......... Best wallpaper.........acoustic paint......best Artex pattern for bass reflex

 

[Electro]

Anyone know an online ear-training course so I can catch a difference in my £1500 cables?Its annoying not having trained ears.

I know that post was written in jest but I would actually like to know for real if anybody knows where I could get some information/training on how to spot tiny differences in things like cables or MP3 files.

People often say on these forums that you can train yourself to hear the tiny differences which would otherwise go unknown - well I'd like to give it a try.

This could possibly be the sort of thing you are looking for .

http://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/welcome-to-how-to-listen.html

 

[steve_1979]

Anyone know an online ear-training course so I can catch a difference in my £1500 cables?Its annoying not having trained ears.

I know that post was written in jest but I would actually like to know for real if anybody knows where I could get some information/training on how to spot tiny differences in things like cables or MP3 files.

People often say on these forums that you can train yourself to hear the tiny differences which would otherwise go unknown - well I'd like to give it a try.

This could possibly be the sort of thing you are looking for .

http://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/welcome-to-how-to-listen.html

Thanks. I'll give that a go when I get a bit of spare time.

I'll be interested in using it to compare MP3's to lossless files rather than messing around with cables though.

 

[matt49]

Anyone know an online ear-training course so I can catch a difference in my £1500 cables?Its annoying not having trained ears.

I know that post was written in jest but I would actually like to know for real if anybody knows where I could get some information/training on how to spot tiny differences in things like cables or MP3 files.

People often say on these forums that you can train yourself to hear the tiny differences which would otherwise go unknown - well I'd like to give it a try.

Steve, you might find this interesting. Apparently Harman use it when training subjects for their listening tests. N.b. I'm not vouching for it, just responding in good faith to your query.

:cheers:

Matt

 

[nopiano]

Just out of curiosity really. It would have nothing whatsoever to do with musical enjoyment though, I would just like to try to see if I could do it.

I'm a bit of a geek and find that sort of thing interesting. I'm also quite young and (I think) still have fairly good hearing.

At home, I'd suggest simply playing a few tracks regularly, at differing times, to see how they come across, for example tonally and emotionally. Is it always as clear, or meaningful, or does your reaction change?

i find things sound better late at night. That might be lower ambient noise, like distant traffic, or cleaner mains with fewer vacuums and pcs on! After a few weeks you could try changing just one thing. That might be a cable or a location of an item. You should be sufficiently familiar by then to judge any improvement or change.

Outside the home, try to hear some live music, whether choir, band or orchestra - whatever you fancy or can afford. The sound of real music in live space is often bit of a shock! Or try to hear a recording session. I had almost a day at Abbey Road after asking nicely!

 

[Tear Drop]

The sound of real music in live space is often bit of a shock!

The importance of this cannot be overstated. I think the shock comes from realising how p***poor most hifi systems actually are.

 

[alienmango]

Any home owners with a decent enough system willing to put on a test with a few people? I'm sure there's a few people on this thread willing to bring some mains cables to the party. I'd happily analyse the statistics if you give me an excel sheet. Bring RCA plus too and test them one at a time (use the best mains cable when switching between RCA cables etc) so the limiting factor is the thing you're changing. Do speaker cables aswell.

Try to get some people aged 10-30 to hear it too.

Surely there's one person on this forum willing to stand up to their signifiant others and let a load of "hifi weirdos" in for a round of fun?

 

[chebby]

Any home owners with a decent enough system willing to put on a test with a few people? I'm sure there's a few people on this thread willing to bring some mains cables to the party. I'd happily analyse the statistics if you give me an excel sheet. Bring RCA plus too and test them one at a time (use the best mains cable when switching between RCA cables etc) so the limiting factor is the thing you're changing. Do speaker cables aswell.

Try to get some people aged 10-30 to hear it too.

Surely there's one person on this forum willing to stand up to their signifiant others and let a load of "hifi weirdos" in for a round of fun?

Never mind what the wife thought, I would call the Police immediately! You are talking about some really disturbed people (not just the usual freaks like axe-murderers or Jehovah's Witnesses).

 

[Deleted member 2457]

Any home owners with a decent enough system willing to put on a test with a few people? I'm sure there's a few people on this thread willing to bring some mains cables to the party. I'd happily analyse the statistics if you give me an excel sheet. Bring RCA plus too and test them one at a time (use the best mains cable when switching between RCA cables etc) so the limiting factor is the thing you're changing. Do speaker cables aswell.

Try to get some people aged 10-30 to hear it too.

Surely there's one person on this forum willing to stand up to their signifiant others and let a load of "hifi weirdos" in for a round of fun?

Never mind what the wife thought, I would call the Police immediately! You are talking about some really disturbed people (not just the usual freaks like axe-murderers or Jehovah's Witnesses).

Lol.

 

[Anderson]

It's amazing what people can convince themselves of, I recommend a thorough read of the following http://roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

 

[Alec]

No need mate, the BS is free. It's the last bastion of the audiomug: "your hearing isn't good enough". Yeah, whatever. It's disinformation of the kind that Isac puts out that gives the hobby a bad name. GIGO indeed.

Yeah ! But look how long it took to prove the Higg-Boson theory. ..............:O

The discovery of the Higgs boson particle needed billions of pounds and the colaboration of scientists, governments and engineering companies to build several particle collider's before the Higgs boson was detected.

All you would need to do to prove that different mains cables can be detected by hearing alone would be for someone to be able to pick them out a statistically significant number of times in a proper scientifically valid blind comparison test. Yet it has never been done.

Though of course, it is possible to toss a coin and have it land on heads 100 times in a row, but there's no skill, it's just luck.

 

[steve_1979]

Though of course, it is possible to toss a coin and have it land on heads 100 times in a row, but there's no skill, it's just luck.

Hence I used the the phrase "a statistically significant number of times".

Although possible it's highly improbable that you could to toss a coin 100 times and have it land on heads every time. In fact there is a 99.999999999999999999999999999921% chance that it would land on tails at least once. This is a statistically significant number indicating that there would probably be another factor involved other than luck if it landed on heads 100 times in a row.

The same goes for blind testing. Do it once and you have a 50% chance of guessing right. Do it 10 times and you only have a 0.09765625% chance of guessing it right. That would enough of a statistically significant number of times to convince me that it's definitely not just a fluke and someone can actally hear a difference.

(hope I got the maths right. )

 

[alienmango]

I think the only positive contribution by the next poster is one in which someone opens up their house/hifi store/a venue etc in which this can actually happen, otherwise this thread will inexorably end like all the others.

..................................END OF THREAD ......................................

(unless somone offers a place to test stuff who themselves has suitably revealing equipment)

 

[Alec]

I think the only positive contribution by the next poster is one in which someone opens up their house/hifi store/a venue etc in which this can actually happen, otherwise this thread will inexorably end like all the others.

..................................END OF THREAD ......................................

(unless somone offers a place to test stuff who themselves has suitably revealing equipment)

Postng this just because I can.

 

[Alec]

Though of course, it is possible to toss a coin and have it land on heads 100 times in a row, but there's no skill, it's just luck.

Hence I used the the phrase "a statistically significant number of times".

Although possible it's highly improbable that you could to toss a coin 100 times and have it land on heads every time. In fact there is a 99.999999999999999999999999999921% chance that it would land on tails at least once. This is a statistically significant number indicating that there would probably be another factor involved other than luck if it landed on heads 100 times in a row.

The same goes for blind testing. Do it once and you have a 50% chance of guessing right. Do it 10 times and you only have a 0.09765625% chance of guessing it right. That would enough of a statistically significant number of times to convince me that it's definitely not just a fluke and someone can actally hear a difference.

(hope I got the maths right. )

Actually, I should have said ten times as it has been done, but it doesn't really matter, we just neef to be aware of the principe, an I'm sure many here are more aware and more numerate than I.

 

[spiny norman]

..................................END OF THREAD ......................................

(unless somone offers a place to test stuff who themselves has suitably revealing equipment)

Are we allowed to appoint ourselves as moderators now, then?

 

[slice]

Though of course, it is possible to toss a coin and have it land on heads 100 times in a row, but there's no skill, it's just luck.

Hence I used the the phrase "a statistically significant number of times".

Although possible it's highly improbable that you could to toss a coin 100 times and have it land on heads every time. In fact there is a 99.999999999999999999999999999921% chance that it would land on tails at least once. This is a statistically significant number indicating that there would probably be another factor involved other than luck if it landed on heads 100 times in a row.

The same goes for blind testing. Do it once and you have a 50% chance of guessing right. Do it 10 times and you only have a 0.09765625% chance of guessing it right. That would enough of a statistically significant number of times to convince me that it's definitely not just a fluke and someone can actally hear a difference.

(hope I got the maths right. )

Actually, I should have said ten times as it has been done, but it doesn't really matter, we just neef to be aware of the principe, an I'm sure many here are more aware and more numerate than I.

You could use a Hypothesis Test, with say a 1% level of significance. The Null Hypothesis would be that you can't tell the difference between the cables. The Alternative Hypothesis would be that the expensive cable is better, and you could state which one it is. Testing the two cables blind in Random order 20 times would give a critical region of 16 or more. ie if you got it right 16 or more times out of 20 this would happen by chance less than 1% of the time if the expensive cable made no difference, so you could conclude it is likely the cable actually makes a difference. If you were slacker and used a10% level of significance, the critical region would be 14 or more out of 20.

 

[alienmango]

If we consistently get ambigious results (as I'd expect as a cable sceptic) then I'll build a freaking monte carlo simulation BUT can we please get some god damn results first.

Can someone with both expensive and relatively inexpensive (named so we know we're not looking at 99p cables than may significantly affect resistance) get a friend to do a blind test on them?

 

[steve_1979]

You could use a Hypothesis Test, with say a 1% level of significance. The Null Hypothesis would be that you can't tell the difference between the cables. The Alternative Hypothesis would be that the expensive cable is better, and you could state which one it is. Testing the two cables blind in Random order 20 times would give a critical region of 16 or more. ie if you got it right 16 or more times out of 20 this would happen by chance less than 1% of the time if the expensive cable made no difference, so you could conclude it is likely the cable actually makes a difference. If you were slacker and used a10% level of significance, the critical region would be 14 or more out of 20.

Agreed. That sounds like the most logical way to do it.

 

[spiny norman]

You could use a Hypothesis Test, with say a 1% level of significance. The Null Hypothesis would be that you can't tell the difference between the cables. The Alternative Hypothesis would be that the expensive cable is better, and you could state which one it is. Testing the two cables blind in Random order 20 times would give a critical region of 16 or more. ie if you got it right 16 or more times out of 20 this would happen by chance less than 1% of the time if the expensive cable made no difference, so you could conclude it is likely the cable actually makes a difference. If you were slacker and used a10% level of significance, the critical region would be 14 or more out of 20.

Agreed. That sounds like the most logical way to do it.

If so, we are all VSF.