Interconnects and non-believers


For anyone who denies there are differences in cables, I have news for you.
There are vast differences.  I just switched interconnects between my CD transport (Cyrus) and DAC (Schiit Gumby), and the result was transformational.  Every possible parameter was improved: better definition, better soundstaging,  better bass, better depth etc.
I can’t understand how any audiophile with ears can deny the differences.  Is it delusion or dogma?
128x128rvpiano
aalenik,

Sound cool to me.  Thanks again.  I agree the forum is about sharing our experiences.  It's also fun to hash stuff out about the hobby as well.
After all, it makes sense to be interested in the explanations for experiences as well as the experiences.
rvpiano,

Well, I have to say our assessment of Teo’s post(s) are pretty much at odds. You mention three words that pretty much what come to my mind when I read it. ;-)

I can see why you may like it; it’s a diss of people who claim not to hear differences in cables, so it expresses the sentiment of your original post. But I would challenge you to actually pull a good argument out of what he wrote. And one that isn’t ultimately self-defeating.

It’s one thing to go of into soliloquies attributing some specious argument to other people and "knocking them down." It’s entirely another thing to specifically address what someone actually written. Teo as far as I can see spends a lot of time on the former and doesn’t seem terribly interested in the latter. Note when I pointed out his critique of my position derived from his own strawman, he didn’t acknowledge this at all.

Similarly when I responded to another post of Teo’s:

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/beware-the-audio-guru?page=4

He just carries on, ignoring all the problems pointed out in his string of confidently declared claims.   And that his very argument about the skeptics, and those who "can’t hear" the differences seem to just as ready to undermine those who claim they can. (And this is a common problem with arguments against blind testing, or other forms of controlled testing, and skeptical challenges: the Golden Ear who can easily heard "transformational" differences when he swaps in new cables suddenly looks for every excuse of why it soooo haaard to pick up these now-micro-differences in more carefully designed tests. The problem remains: if you think tests in which efforts to really control and account for known variables are unreliable...what in the world make you think tests with fewer controls, which allow for all sort of known bias effects, are MORE reliable????)

Teo continually poses as if he is tearing down the foundations of the type of skepticism people like me bring to some high end audio claims, but he has yet to accurately interpret or critique anything I’ve been writing.

But maybe that’s because my posts are too dangerously "Machiavellian" to touch ;-)

As I keep saying: we need to move out of black and white thinking - that someone either has to be a Believer or a Disbeliever - and that any nuance or caveats are just sneaky and Machiavellian. It really is possible to consider two points of view; to represent a case for skepticism without committing to that case, or to have come to a negative conclusion.

(Anyway, bye thread for now as I’m off on vacation...cheers everyone!)

prof,

Your position, as I’m beginning to understand, is radically middle of the road.
You are not black and white.  There are no absolutes. All things are relative.
To you, the fact that the majority of audiophiles regard cables as having significant differences is a call to arms on philosophical grounds. Your mission is to defend the minority.
This seems to be a kind intellectual exercise, but I’m afraid one that is misguided.

Have a wonderful, much needed, vacation.
The old AQ Truth are great cables, in truth. I wish they still made them. If I recall correctly even back then AQ controlled them for directionality. I had copper and silver versions of AQ Truth. Other than keeping connections nice and bright the AQ Truth should be good to go. Electrons don’t seem to get tired. There is no
Geritol for electrons even if they did.

I had a pair of AQ GR8 speaker cables for years. Only sold them when I moved up to some Nordost cables.
Very good cables from my memory.
Never seen or heard of them from anybody else until now...lol.
I can’t believe someone even remembers those Truth cable! Much less owned some. They never seemed to get in the way or cause any problems over the years, so I just left them. A couple years ago I wrote AQ to see if they could put new terminals on when I was renewing my system, but never got around to it. Geoffkait has me thinking about the directionality, since the lettering has worn/polished off over the years. I suppose if I got the new terminals they could figure that out. And now I’ll never sleep until I figure out if I have them installed backwards! lol