John Dunlavy On "Cable Nonsense"

Leafs, I thought that you didn't believe in tests? So now why are you slamming MIT based on the result of a pernicious and feared test?

Oh, never mind. I now understand that if it is a controlled test conducted in a systematic, unimpassioned, objective way then the results are suspect. But throw together 5 audio dweebs and "Katy bar the door."

I agree with Dunlavy that the snake oil peddled in cable claims only serves to detract from actual technological development and advances in audio quality, and tarnishes the audio industry in general.

Or to rephase Doc's statement, for some reason tests based on SOUND ONLY are suspect amongst a large proportion of "cable believers". Let everybody know which component is being tested and it becomes a meaningful test????

Not in my book.
JHunter

Jadem6 -

If you don't understand what JD was talking about, maybe there's a reason?? ;-)

JHunter

Good point, Jhunter.

Dr. Floyd Toole and Sean Olive published a report in the AES journal some years ago where they had a group of 40 listeners evaluate various speakers in various listening positions, both "blind" and "sighted" tests. Some listeners were inexperienced, while about 9 or 10 claimed to be audiophiles. Interestingly, the inexperienced listeners were more consistant in their scoring of the speakers between the "blind" and the "sighted" tests, which suggests that they were to some extent more reliant on the speakers' audible characteristics, while the "audiophile" listeners' score jumped more wildly going from "blind" to "sighted" tests, which seems to indicate that they were more heavily influenced by what they saw and less by what they heard.