Are we crazy?

Posted by: Arye_Gur on 18 April 2002

Again and again I hear the sentence - it's impossible that you can hear a difference between "x" and "y" because its against the known facts by science.

You say that you can hear differences between AC cables - and the engineers are claiming that you are crazy.
You say that you hear differences between speaker's cables - and the engineers - "impossible - it's psychological effect".

You can swear that there are a differences between interconnects " can't be true, they say, AC flow can't identify which cable you are using".

A dedicated spur - are you laughing at us? Hundreds of hundreds of meters from the power station to your home - and the last 2 meters are making the difference?

Racks? Don't be a fool, electronic equipment that is based on transistors can't be sensitive to shelves - take a screwdriver and knock on any point you wish in the amp - and you'll see that you can't notice the noise.

An expensive transport? Are you laughing at us? Take the output of any
transport you wish and we'll prove that you get the same digital output - no matter how expensive the transport is.

And the list goes on and on.

So the bottom question - are we crazy?

Arye
Posted on: 19 April 2002 by herm
Power Strip

Hi Richard,

you forgot to give us an idea what this strip costs in Euro's, pounds or whatever.

Herman
Posted on: 19 April 2002 by Simon Anthony
BfT.

I do admire your adherence to scientific testing, but I would point out that we already, clearly know that cables make a difference.

As some have observed earlier in this thread, cables have electrical characteristics. Do not use high capacitance speaker leads with a Naim power amp, the amp will not be stable and you risk burning it up!

Also you will be using it beyond its design characteristics. As well as a Tut-tut from the service department and a bill to fix it, you will be missing the best that the amp has to offer. It will likely sound 'off'.

I have to suspect that most of the cables that people are buying are being used as 'tone controls' - super filters used to modify problems with equipment and setup. They are being bought because they do make a perceptible difference. It is too bad that they are a costly, inappropriate band-aid that frequently will hide music while fixing that room caused bass boom.

Simon
Posted on: 19 April 2002 by Paul Ranson
Simon,

It is predictable that cables with different bulk electrical characteristics will sound different.

It is the claims for some other characteristic of the cable affecting the perceived sound that cannot be measured that surprise.

It is a simple enough experiment that one wonders why the manufacturers don't do it. Take a Flying Calf, using two equal length cables connect one input to the amplifier/cable junction and the other to the cable/speaker junction. It will probably be necessary to use some form of attenuation, as long as it's equal.

Connect the Flying Calf output to an S/PDIF input on a PC.

The difference between the signals seen by each side of the Flying Calf is the effect of the cable. In conjunction with some analysis it would be possible to determine what the transfer characteristic of the cable was, and how that deviates from its predicted inductance/capacitance/resistance characteristic.

I may even try this at home...

Paul
Posted on: 19 April 2002 by Andrew L. Weekes
Paul,

You could do a couple of simple anlayses on those results.

A program such as Cooledit will easily allow you to invert and then mix two channels to get the sum or difference. Listening and FFT analysis may show some interesting effects.

I'd suggest that as a control though you'd need to do it for the same signal input first, to ensure the channels are balanced - you should get a complete null on identical signals.

If you're feeding the Flying Calf into a SBLive though forget it - it's terrible at handling digital inputs!

There's also an argument that would say the dynamic range of the calf is inadequate for the test wink

Let us know if you try it though.

A.
Posted on: 19 April 2002 by Paul Ranson
quote:
If you're feeding the Flying Calf into a SBLive though forget it - it's terrible at handling digital inputs!


I have a Midiman Audiophile thing. Which is an alternative input mechanism.

quote:
There's also an argument that would say the dynamic range of the calf is inadequate for the test


The resolution and dynamic range of the FC should be in the same range as the source, and if there's anything to '24 bit' even a bit better. Because we're using two channels of the same converter perhaps jitter cancels.

quote:
Let us know if you try it though.


OK!

Paul
Posted on: 19 April 2002 by Martinm
I think the issue cannot be resolved due to the human element. Engineering data is quantitative whereas humans are qualitative in their behaviour. In a sense I’ve had similar problems when trying to conduct mystery shops – you cannot account for the human influence, as it will always have an impact on results and interpretation – the moment you send a human to make a judgement on a shops performance you are already being influenced by, mood, tiredness, preconceptions etc.
We all see and hear things differently anyway, some of us have similar tastes and hence we have gravitated toward Naim kit. But even here we all have more differences than similarities (racks for discussion anyone?).
Human senses also pick far more than what is just being measured in terms of electronics, that is we must have a holistic view of the environment as we are part of it. We could set up as many machines to test things as possible but they cannot possibly measure the environment in the way a human can or measure us!

I do believe the final proof of the pudding is listening tests - conducted at Naim I seem to remember, if the machines could do it all why bother?

Just my observations – good thread BTW

Martin