Directional speaker cables - switching direction

Jea48

Sorry if that is not your position. I have to go by what you just posted here.

well, well, just yesterday, after setting my system back up friday night, and re- breaking in my speaker cables and speaker cable jumpers that are state of the art, I could hear a small difference in my right speaker compaired to the left, now friday night I was drinking heavy, celebration of 2 years and 8 months of dealing with my amp came to a wonderful close, so hell yea, I am going to drink!, back to yesterday, I was sober, after hearing a difference in the sound, I walked up to both speakers and evaluated the connection's, whoa and behold, only one jumper on the right channel, the negative was turned the wrong direction, instead of the signal going from bottom post to top, it was backwards, shut down everything, flipped the Tara Labs Omega Jumper correctly, bam, the wife says, what did you do now, I said why, she said that the sound now had fuller vocals and way more detail!, that said, over a year ago, we tested all the jumpers at the same time going the other direction, when we did that, I remember the wife thought then that something blew up because the sound was hugely poor, a much more difference then just one jumper out of place., cheers.

Is it really true that wives hear better than their better halves? Or is that an old wives tale?

;-)

Hi Geoffkait, my wife has proven many times that she does hear better than me, her ears are more sensative to high frequencys, during most auditions of any new equipment, doing a/b testing, just when I thought my decision was done, I would go back to what she said in the very beginning of the testing, as it turns out, the one she picked is the winner, and then I'm like Damn, she is always right!, last time I checked my hearing at the doctor's, there was nothing wrong, yes, I can go with women hear better than men, absolutely.

It really depends on the individual, hard and fast rules about gender and hearing acuity are not truly "hard and fast". For instance, no female in my family or any girlfriend I have had can hear with the acuity that I can....and I'm male. I've met nobody who has been so annoyed by TV or fluorescent light squeal as I have, to the point of having to leave some stores.

But I have to say in blind tests I have not been able to tell which direction cables are hooked up when I have someone else do the switching (or non-switching).

Audiophiles should read about placebo effect, expectation bias, but of course most audiophiles will be the first to reject such notions, proven as they are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimenter%27s_bias

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/the-power-of-suggestion-what-we-expect-influences-our-behavior-for-better-or-worse.html

In many ways, this belief always reminded me of audio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing

Keep in mind that this is coming from an audio guy who has been in it for his entire life since 12 years old and who owns a warehouse full of audio gear including hundreds of sets of high end cables. In other words, I'm a big believer in small differences making a big difference. But I've also watched many folks fool themselves and make the wrong pick time and time again, when they swore in advance that they could identify something, when I am the one to make the changes (or not) in what they are listening to.