Speaking of audiophools

Yes, there'll be a difference that's essentially down the different resistance in the 2 types of cable.

Graham

That's been tried. The true audiophile will insist that you can't really quantify what sounds good. In fact, that part is (AFAIK) accepted by the wider audio engineering community. Unfortunately, the fact that no one has built a 'goodness' meter for sound means that all these snake oil salesmen start hawking their wares.

_I_ think that what needs to be done is a double-blind test: Speaker set A, with Monster cables, and speaker set B, without. Don't let the listener know which set is connected to regular cable and which one is Monsterfied. Let _them_ tell _you_ which sounds better.

Remember: You're dealing with people who think dipping their speaker cables in liquid nitrogen is passe -- it must be dipped in LN2 in _just the right way_.

That's the product! A 'goodness' meter.

There's an outfit that makes an illuminated globe which changes color based on a wireless signal. The signal (from a national paging network) defaults to the daily change in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. But one may subscribe to a service with the serial number of an individual globe and, via a web based interface, reprogram it to respond to any data source available on the web.

I propose developing a meter, based on a similar technology, that will indicate a level of audio 'goodness' which I can control over a similar wireless network. The variable I will use to set each goodness meter is the amount of money that each audiophool spends on my products.

The method of comparison is to provide the listener with an ABX box, which (with relays) switches in cable A or cable B or cable X which is A or B at random.

If the listener can correctly identify cable X more often than not the cables are considered to be different.

Audiophools run a mile at the mention of ABX testing.

People do this all the time and the audiophools ignore the results. Of course, the experiments need to be double-blind (the person making the judgment does not know which cable is which and does not communicate with anyone who does), and that is contrary to the principles of audiophoolery.

My rule of thumb with audio quality is: If there is a difference in signal quality measurable with some instrument, then you can argue about whether people can hear it; maybe they can. But if electronic instruments do not detect a difference, neither will ears.

The audiophools (sorry, high-end audiophiles) maintain that the ear (of a person aware of the equipment being used -- no blind testing) is far more sensitive than any electronic instrument.

Almost certainly, they are detecting and *enjoying* some sort of distortion, which is understandable. Pure tones are boring, and just a little bit of echo or other effect makes the sound richer and more interesting. This is totally subjective, and in opposition to what sensitive instrumentation would detect. It would be wonderful to build a device that could introduce just the right amount and type of distortion that would make an audiophool drool!

Paul

Which is exactly what I was suggesting, to measure signals and differences thereof.

The issues that audiophool peddlers raise, like capacitance of wires, are several orders of magnitude below what might possibly matter mto the most discriminating ear.

I have very hard times mustering pity for those people.

I worked in the Stereo Sales/Service business for several years. With the advent of modern solid-state amplifiers that work essentially perfectly - far beyond the limits of human hearing and sound reproduction (speaker technoloby), the industry made many attemps to 'improve' the sound.

Because human hearing is quite variable both physically and subjectively, it was easy to foist a lot of nonsense on many AudioFools. Dealing with many of these people was like dealing with religious fantatics.

I switched to working with computers - they work of they don't; there is no subjectivity.

Luhan

That's because "switching" is similiar to "splicing" and every audiophool knows that is a no-no.

There is some thinking that it involves strengthening the second and maybe fourth harmonics. Anybody want to try?

Exactly. If it were really that hard to get a 20-kHz signal through a wire, then television, with its 6-MHz bandwidth, would never have existed!

...

This suggests a new direction to go in. Maybe high fidelity (= reproduction of the incoming sound) is not what is desired. Go for high perceptibility instead. That is, study auditory perception and enhance whatever it is that helps people distinguish sounds. (The old-fashioned loudness control, with bass and treble boost, was a start in that direction.)

It reminds me of high-tech telescope eyepieces that compensate for the lens aberrations in the human eye, rather than just delivering a perfect image for the eye to look at.

Same applies to gigabit ethernet (which is binary bit based, but still).

I'd like to see a bumper sticker: "If you're so rich how come you're not smart?"

Cheers! Rich

As a demo experiment to a hardware class, I have taken 1o feet of 14 gage twisted pair hardware store lampcord and compared it to 10 feet of monster cable using time domain reflectometry. No difference except price.

Ted

Isn't that was Bose did?

Tim

What was the load ?

I'm surprised no-one here realises why there *is* a difference. It's really very simple.

Graham

In the above example there *is* a measureable difference.

That much is true of the real 'phools' but often so-called scientific types ignore the real differences ( such as in this example by ppl posting here ) and encourage this attitude.

Graham

That would be true of the toob nuts.

It would be nice if somone here could see that speaker wire *does* make a difference. I suspect maybe you're not fully aware of the characteristics of speaker Z.

Graham