Most Important, Unloved Cable...

I'll be heading out to Williams on the 11th of November. Looks to be a good time.

I wish Douglas could have be present today as we test this out blinded.

WGUTZ also has a pair of Sennheisers we can evaluate with. I've brought a 100 foot CAT6, unterminated CAT5 (approx 30 feet), my Emotiva DC-1, two computers, Cisco SG 200-08 L3 managed switch.

I had a great day hanging with William and geeking out. Went to his friend Gordon's and enjoyed some bourbon and his custom speaker system.

1st off: Williams system simply images and layers. Pin point accurate. Really good sweet spot. Did have some issues with a channel due to some cabling but that was sorted out post haste. 

I brought a 100 foot ribbon style CAT6 that was ~$13 delivered from Amazon, Cisco SG 200-08, BJC 3 meter 6a, Emotiva DC-1.

We did both sighted and blinded evaluation of the 5 meter DIY vs the 30 meter machined. Honestly I couldn't hear a difference on either his laptop or mine. William thought his laptop was more sensitive to cabling and I believe he thought mine was nullifying any cable differences or making any changes so minute as to being immaterial. 

On the blinded evaluation it was 6 of 10 correct. He did some switching blind for me and I was simply guessing. 

For me there was no real ahah! moment. If we spent 30 seconds without music playing, and regardless of cable used, when resumed it always sounded the best and then immediately looping the playback would diminish. Wait another 30 - 60 seconds and the first playback always sounded best. I think it's like any endeavor, you tend to do best after a bit of a break. 

William liked the DC-1 DAC. His Wadia 121 is nice and I REALLY liked the remote for it. Pure sit in your chair convenience. 

Just wanted to again say thanks to William for the terrific hospitality and it was a blast. If anyone else bumps into William out and about: Ask him about his rock collection ;-)

WGUtz has a custom, 5 meter, cryo-treated, cable. The other cable was a 30 meter cable costing $13 shipped.

He certainly had a highly resolving setup. Going through this in a persons own setup it certainly added weight to my previous findings and I’m much more comfortable now in wanting to test out in other peoples systems.

Wish it would have been for the $$.

I’ve also had this done with a $700 Nordost 1 meter, $340 AQ 1 meter, $330 Wireworld 3 meter. Please stop attempting to put your head in the sand over this fact.

All I know is that someone that was sure they could hear differences in cabling only hit 6 out of 10.

They had a 3 meter Best Buy Insignia they they insisted was just all sorts of horrible. Brought that up and put it into my system and even sighted he was having great difficulty hearing what he previously thought.

Here’s a tidbit for Tidal users: Tidal caches the entire track so you can remove the cable and the track will play. If you have a reasonably fast connection you could have an entire track queued up in 10 seconds.

This only re-affirms my conviction that if anyone did have me out that they would be learning an important lesson about how much faith they put into their ears.

After this recent visit I'm even more certain in the validity of my position.

Not attempting to do anything but learn what you did. I can’t read your mind and know what you did in the past or even what a “custom”cable is? What is it? No reason to attack and be rude. Your test is still ambiguous to me and others as we have no idea what the custom cable is. Simple to understand my point here right?

We evaluated a claim: That someone hears a difference in cable A vs B regardless of anything else.

I’ve posted in this thread before what cabling I tested with in the past. More than once. Sorry about snapping about that.

Custom cable in this instance is General Cable CAT6A and Siemons industrial 6A terminations and Cryo-Treament.

Honestly it doesn’t matter what the cable is. I wasn’t testing the cable I was testing the claim. Later in the day (we did the bias controlled evaluation around 3PM) we were just exploring what each of us listens to. I had my laptop logged in with his Tidal account and playing music back and while talking just kept switching out cabling without interruption. He said he thought my laptop rendered any cabling changes moot. Simply couldn’t hear a difference because the entire track had been cached by Tidal.

Same for JRiver (I had the buffer set for the default 6 seconds).

So we had the discussion of: If you have two devices and one changes it’s sound character based on the cabling, and the other renders it moot, and the one that renders it moot sounds good...

The other issue we had in setup is that the AQ DBS RCA cabling was really touchy. I thought AQ had lifetime warranty only to find out the last cable he sent in for repair cost $150. The REPAIR cost $150, not the cable. Yikes. So I consider that part of the evaluation compromised. When you have to play with the cable where the jacket enters the RCA plug assembly to achieve full output I’m not sure how you could consider that optimum.

I’m willing to do this again if feasible. But really not willing to eat travel costs to do so. But man we had a good time. 

WGUtz knows a ton about property management/leasing etc. I probably asked him a million questions about the subject. Most likely to the point of exhausting him on the matter :-)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. One test means nothing. Blind test, ABA, AB, what have you. A test cannot prove anything, but it certainly cannot prove that there are no differences among cables if the results are negative. Too many things can go wrong, even when everyone is on the up and up and trying to be thorough, etc. Geez, even disrupting the connections when unplugging and plugging cables during testing changes the whole playing field. Come on, people! No offense to anyone testing but don’t try to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.

Lets start with some logic:

1. When normally hearing differences in cables a cable swap is required. So nothing is being done that already hasn't. 

2. One test and the outcome only has value for the claimant. I've said nothing concrete about anyone else. I have said this emboldens my belief that others would perform about the same. 

3. I can concretely say that in the system we had that you personally could not tell when the connections were changed. 

So what is your confidence level in your ears only evaluation? 

I use a Cheap Terra Grand for $10.  Will be trying Wireworld. Based on my experience it takes time to really appreciate system changes.  I would say at least 3-5 days of various listening sessions.  

This is easily testable. I could setup a system were the computer is dual homed and remotely I could hit the switch and issue a 'shut' command on one of the interfaces in the LAG.

Switch>en
      Switch# conf t
          Switch(config)# int fa0/1 or fa0/2 (whatever the interfaces are)
               Switch(config-if) shut or no shut

That's it. I could remote in after two weeks and make a change, or one week, or 22 days. What have you. Just black box the entire thing. 
  

All of of this is so system dependent as to make your test rather limited in conclusions. Nothing wrong with your test or trying, but what is true in that one system is often not perfectly transferable to another system. Just the way it is.  

If the Ethernet connection is implemented properly then it won't be an issue. If you have a device that is susceptible to just 12 out of 328 feet of cabling you have a problem IMO. 

Even it if I take what you say @ face value I still believe blinded testing is going to change the perception radically. 

The test has no value for the claimant either.but you are free to believe whatever you want to.

The results are what they are.

My questions are: When would you be willing to sit for a bias controlled evaluation?

How are you able to interject on behalf of the claimant?

How do you know it had no value for the claimant?

How do you know their custom cable with all it's treatments isn't the equivalent of others in the industry?

How do you know what their system sounds like? I do. 

Here’s the crux:

It’s patently ignorant to support numerous sighted evaluation but pan bias controlled evaluations even when we only have a few instances so far.

It’s a single instance farther in the correct direction than any single one of you have actually made it.

Again, feel free to have me out with a client / server and your USB DAC and downstream chain. Just cover my travel expenses if you can’t hit 18/20.

Honestly, if it takes two weeks for a ’change’ to be ’noticed’ there are other things at play mentally.

This is the problem with the world population. Some ’hundreds of thousands’ (and more) and into the millions as scattered across the earth, say the earth is flat. That is a humongous blip of statistical significance.

Fixed that for you. I thought better context could be provided in couching your response in easier to relate terms. 

The result could be predicted. Confront the voodoo priests with the experimenttal facts that show they were wrong and they will try to change the rules of the game. As for Geoff and Theo, they of course have a financial stake in perpetuating such deception.

I've been surprised that the most vocal of differences are also the most adamant that they simply be trusted without any instrumented verification to further credential the claims made. 
 

Nothing is being claimed as a scam. I understand the fundamentals of how Ethernet works. I've tried out three boutique cables vs one that I made. 1 person here had the intellectual humility to simply hear without knowing what is in situ. 

All I'm asking for is someone, anyone, provide some proof as to their ability to hear these differences and have that difference follow the expensive cable. 

It's not to much to ask. 

I was just having a drink with my buddy the Invisible Pink Unicorn the other day talking about the audacity of people not believing me and the 100's of thousands of people that know him. I understand that while you may not be able to see my Invisible Pink Unicorn buddy, it's only because either your eyes, your glasses, or both suck. 

He exists, you just need to believe me. 

Why Pink? Quite offensive, I’d say. : )

Don’t color shame my Invisible Pink Unicorn Buddy. He’s having a hard enough time with the naysayers that would like some evidence other then my and a few 100 thousand other peoples say so.

I can leap tall buildings in a single bound but it wouldn’t be scientifically significant even if you asked me to prove it to so I don’t bother with it. Need a rather large N of people jumping buildings for my claim to be even relevant. 

I’m still waiting for my phone call from machine dynamica to make my system sound better.

Maybe the The Teleportation Tweak is being updated for compatibility with SMS.

Been beating the subjective audiophile with the Generic Zip Cord of Logic since 1999(tm)

The same argument has been leveled against power coming in off the grid and how could a high quality power cable in the last couple of feet “rescue” an already polluted AC source.

While I agree the same argument has been leveled, the people the level the same points about a power vs Ethernet don’t know what they are talking about.

Unlike power, every port that data passes through is a reconstruction. 

I have a question regarding Ethernet cables, aside of what all of you are discussing. My cable has to be about 50’ from my computer to my pre pro or DAC. does the length of the cable effect the sound quality?, ( as in HDMI too long is not inherently good)

The standard is 100 meters/328 feet. A solid PHY can drive it ~380 feet with out BER starting to show up.

That’s for 1GBe (~110 MB/s or 1 CD every 7 seconds). Crusty old CAT5e is good for 10GBe at 37 meters with a lot of switches (~1250 MBs/ or 1.7 CD’s every second).

In my testing of 315 foot generic CAT5e (Hypertek) at $.30 a foot and a 3 foot Nordost Heimdall II at $233 a foot (so 7000% more expensive) on a both a server/client computer to USB DAC and server computer to $4000 Cary Audio DMS-500. No one when blinded could tell a difference.

When I recently went out to WGUTZ in Denver and he listened blind he only hit 60%. So basically a coin flip. Otherwise he was positive of differences. The generic cable was a 100 foot $13 flat ribbon style from Amazon. His was ~20 foot custom, cryo treated, with Siemons industrial terminations.

I haven't seen anyone be a proponent of junk. 

Bottom line is $1/foot for a certified Ethernet cable from Blue Jeans is all you need to get the most out of your streamer.

$232 a foot more is not going to buy you a single iota improvement. 

The fact is you can do 10GBe (1250MB/s) over 15 year old CAT5e up to 37 meters on a lot of swtiches now. I could theoretically transfer my entire 2000 album collection in seconds. 

I have learned to ignore those that just cannot hear differences and then make the mistake of assuming the same for all others and all other systems. Audiophiles around the world know better and really don’t pay attention to these rather few dogmatists.

So when can we do this in your setup?

I did over the past week. Ethernet cables and the power supplies to our computers, usb cables, modems, routers, usb cards etc. Amazing how everything’s matters in digital. Everything.

You did what over the past week? Have me out to keep you honest?

Just let me know when you want to go on camera with your mythical hearing abilities.

Douglas, what you are hearing is the direct output of the DAC. The upstream amp, cabling, speakers, room interaction, are all moot because they aren't in the loop.

People need to slow down and read what I'm typing because most are getting ahead of themselves. 

If the Ethernet cable is altering the output of the DAC then it should be captured in the tracks I provided. 

dgarretson wrote: 

" That test is more Where's Waldo than ABX.  Post two files of the same music, each recorded with a different Ethernet cable, and the opportunity to compare them at leisure."

I already posted two tracks. What I'm not doing is giving a 50/50 chance ;-) 

You can listen to the two tracks I posted all you like. I am keen on your ears and what they can discern. Again the setup is dead simple: File Server, Switch, either 315 of dirt cheap CAT5 or 12 feet of uber expensive CAT8 (WireWorld Starlight) Client Computer, DAC, then ADC. 

@cleeds 

I'm not the one making claims. I just testing those. When someone says they can jump 20 feet straight up and I bring out a bar that is 20 feet high, no matter if the bar is made of wood or gold, we are talking about how high someone can jump not what the bar is constructed of.

Either they can or they can not. They can do this on their own system, in their own room, using their own provided track of choice. 

I would like to find an intellectually honest subjectivist. 

@cleeds 

Not one step too far as something the violates TOS but one step too far in ascribing realtime analog properties to a non-realtime system.

Did you know that during playback, for power saving purposes, parts of the NIC's power supply circuitry gets switched off?

Did you know that you can start playback, pull the Ethernet cable and still hear 3/6/10/20 or more seconds of playback?

"That is yet one other reason A/B testing is useless. One needs to compare over long periods of time....days and weeks before they really come to grips with changes in sound with wire, tweaks, or gear. You really need to settle in and live with the new sound over a period of many, many days."


Thanks for the laugh....

Oh to find an honest subjectivist. 

Here are the bottom line issues:

Streaming is non realtime and buffered.

There are Siemons and T.I. white papers that give very in depth analysis of Ethernet and it's resiliency:

" Magnetic field coupling occurs at low frequencies (i.e. 50Hz or 60 Hz) where the balance of the cabling system is more than sufficient to ensure immunity, which means that its impact can be ignored for all types of balanced cabling. Electric fields, however, can produce common mode voltages on balanced cables depending on their frequency. The magnitude of the voltage induced can be modeled assuming that the cabling system is susceptible to interference in the same manner as a loop antenna [1]. For ease of analysis, equation (1) represents a simplified loop antenna model that is appropriate for evaluating the impact on the electric field generated due to various interfering noise source bandwidths as well as the distance relationship of the twisted-pairs to the ground plane. Note that a more detailed model, which specially includes the incidence angle of the electric fields, is required to accurately calculate actual coupled noise voltage.

Where: is the wavelength of the interfering noise source

A = the area of the loop formed by the disturbed length of the cabling conductor (l) suspended an average height (h) above the ground plane
E = the electric field intensity of the interfering source

The wavelength, , of the interfering source can range anywhere from 5,000,000m for a 60 Hz signal to shorter than 1m for RF signals in the 100 MHz and higher band. The electric field strength density varies depending upon the disturber, is dependent upon proximity to the source, and is normally reduced to null levels at a distance of .3m from the source. The equation demonstrates that a 60 Hz signal results in an electric field disturbance that can only be measured in the thousandths of mV range, while sources operating in the MHz range can generate a fairly large electric field disturbance. For reference, 3V/m is considered to be a reasonable approximation of the average electric field present in a light industrial/ commercial environment and 10V/m is considered to be a reasonable approximation of the average electric field present in an industrial environment.


The one variable that impacts the magnitude of the voltage coupled by the electric field is the loop area, A, that is calculated by multiplying the disturbed length of the cabling (l) by the average height (h) from the ground plane. The cross-sectional view in figure 3 depicts the common mode currents that are generated by an electric field. It is these currents that induce unwanted signals on the outermost conductive element of the cabling (i.e. the conductors themselves in a UTP environment or the overall screen/shield in a screened/fully-shielded environment). What becomes readily apparent is that the common mode impedance, as determined by the distance (h) to the ground plane, is not very well controlled in UTP environments. This impedance is dependent upon factors such as distance from metallic raceways, metallic structures surrounding the pairs, the use of non-metallic raceways, and termination location. Conversely, this common mode impedance is well defined and controlled in screened/fully-shielded cabling environments since the screen and/or shield acts as the ground plane. Average approximations for (h) can range anywhere from 0.1 to 1 meter for UTP cabling, but are significantly more constrained (i.e. less than 0.001m) for screened and fully-shielded cabling. This means that screened and fully-shielded cabling theoretically offers 100 to 1,000 times the immunity protection from electric field disturbances than UTP cabling does! 

And finally:

Well balanced (i.e. category 6 and above) cables should be immune to electromagnetic interference up to 30 MHz."

Then we have clock domain boundaries that are taken care of by FIFO buffers:

https://youtu.be/a_RL56y8Fpo?t=622

Here's the thing, despite all the backhanded jabs at my setup which you know nothing about, you simply aren't the smartest person in this context. If you were I would be getting an invite and asked to bring my cash. 

Your eye-brain connection is simply writing a check that can't be cashed. 

@shadorne

" But the golden eared gurus who review and advise the masses are able to hear the difference in the quality of the coal burning at the coal-fired electric power station from 50 miles away - so why not Ethernet cables? "

I got into a conversation with William Low at WBF forum. He said people, all over the world, all the time, at all sorts of venues (trade shows) hear the difference in their Ethernet cabling.

Even in this very thread someone said they had people over that could hear the difference. Were they camping out for two weeks?

Michael Lavorgna said the differences in Ethernet cabling are 'Plain as Day' and 'Readily Apparent'.

So someone is lying. 

@dynaquest4

I understand about gear snobbery. Thankfully I’m into at least doing some measurements to get an idea of what is going on.

It was mentioned about the Salk Streamer (just a computer), I’ve had chance to talk with Jim over the years and he’s a straight shooter as they come, but the Salk StreamPlayer, much like the Bryston that is based on the Pi, are common computers running Linux and MPD.

I can take the ECS Liva Z, add in M.2 storage and get it to sound just as good as the Salk and Bryston units. But I would rather just have a NAS elsewhere and not limit myself to just a few TB of storage.

All you need to know about the subjectivists in this thread is that if they don’t trust their ears, neither should anyone else.

Intellectual honesty is rare.

@geoffkait 

I know Mike Lavigne couldn't tell his $30,000 Magnum Opus from Monster cable. Helpful hint: He has a $500,000 system. 

@geoffkait

Well heck, according to posts in this thread it’s because my system wasn’t expensive enough to be highly resolving of a cable that is 2600% longer and 9100(yes 9 THOUSAND) percent less expensive per foot.

But yet the ADC tracks are some how well recorded. I’m just befuddled at how I could get the DAC=>ADC so close to the original in spite of generational loss. Gosh, how does that happen on a $250 playback machine?

At least you admit that the differences people talk about wrt to Ethernet cabling could actually just be the time of day and not that any difference exists. Did you ever consider that there’s no difference to be had?

Negative results certainly prove something: The lack of positive results.

Another interesting result: I can’t give away $2000.

You don’t say? Was that during the period when his system was out of phase?

Would this be the same phase where he was able to deduce all sorts of flowery prose about his Magnum Opus?

If you want to know at what point it's best to stop digging the hole you don't know you are standing in, well now's the time.

Wait, so people can have positive results totally sighted, negative results when the answers are taken away before hand? Holy crumbs I better email institutions of higher learning and inform them of this epiphany of yours.

So you are saying sighted evaluation is the legitimate way to go about this and controlling for confirmation bias is not?

Ergo: sighted means everything goes ’correct’ and bias controlled evaluation means everything can go wrong.

In your setup, if you have a layer 3 managed switch, and I turn on link aggregation and supply a generic CAT6 cable that all bets are off because now everything is wrong?

"In your setup, if you have a layer 3 managed switch, and I turn on link aggregation and supply a generic CAT6 cable that all bets are off because now everything is wrong?"

I don’t agree with that statement. I don’t even know what that statement is supposed to mean. 😄

It’s because you’ve hit your technical limit of understanding about how Ethernet works but somehow you are more of a subject matter expert than I am all the same.

While you don’t know what I am saying, you are still expert enough to simply disagree with what I suggested to do without realizing what it is that I would be doing?

If you disagree with me setting up 802.11ad than I’m willing to listen to a well thought out technical rebuttal based on your direct experience. I know when I’m talking to a fellow network pro because soon as I mention Layer 3 Managed Switch LAG’s and an additional cable they automatically get it and know where I’m leading.

Ethernet is a data cable. It's not an audio cable. Computer playback is buffered. Heavily. There are two buffers on the NIC itself for starters. Then you have either the USB or PCIe bus the EtherPHY sits on, then RAM, then back to buffer on the USB bus and buffer in the DAC itself. 

The data has been copied multiple times. 

As an experiment I picked up a $330 12 foot 'CAT8' Ethernet cable and I wired up 315 feet of generic CAT 5. All into a managed layer 3 switch with LAG and a $18 dual port Intel Server NIC (New pulls). 

I setup a 2nd machine with a mastering grade ADC and captured tracks while playing back. Relying on the 6 seconds of JRivers default buffer to immunize the system from a break in play. 

I posted two tracks and so far no one has been able to tell me how many changes were made, when the changes were made, what cable was in use. 

Remember this is $0.30 generic CAT5 at 315 foot vs $27.50 foot at 12 feet CAT8. 

If your high end streamer is affected by this then I don't have many good things to say about said streamer vs a $230 Quad Core, Passively cooled AMD Kabini system with a $18 NIC. 

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/5NUQOsUEqZKVgon85pYhxnlNYlAhoHhT3FF9cP0NKfr?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/bD0Z87vfscWzA3PhyE42JuVGagNXmvcKTxqWhQpLIKO?_encoding=UTF8&mgh=1&ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

Now I've publicly posted elsewhere the times of change so I leave you to your own recognizance on these.

@dgarretson

You need to re-read what I did: While I was capturing those two tracks I was ACTIVELY swapping out cables. Yes I was able to record tracks in their entirety while disconnecting Ethernet cabling and plugging another back in and as you can hear there was no break in the playback. Please let the significance of this sink in for a moment. 

The tracks you are listening to are a composite of both cables.

Any of them doing this with Ethernet? You know that is THE topic at hand.

I’m going to revert to 5 1/4 inch floppies for source material and wire my house with RG59, vampire clamps, and revert back to thinnet and use IPX/SPX for truly veil lifting bass and dance-ability of the highs. This will also add 2X to the ^57th power of sham-wowiness to vocal presence of the mids.

I’ve got audiophile resistors coming to terminate the thinnet with. Unfortunately I can’t afford IBM Token Ring, Banyan Vines, DEQNet, or AppleTalk.

Furthermore, I’m going to write all my device drivers in COBOL because C++ just sounds harsh and edgy and reformat all my disks with FAT16.

Next I’m going to let DOS 3.3 burn in for a month or two. You really do need to do OS burn-in to get the best sound.

Here are a few tracks to try on various Ethernet Cables:

https://youtu.be/30o7_iy-O1g?t=1167

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CASghTzNhc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBpiV72pLAo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSSPto8rvvs

You say, "If the Ethernet cable is altering the output of the DAC then it should be captured in the tracks I provided." Perhaps. That will happen if the system is good enough. If it's poor then likely the difference will not be noticeable. Seriously, a couple hundred dollar system is what you are putting up for evidence? How about you get some serious gear and do the test? Audiophilia is not the reduction of quality to the lowest common denominator. You WILL get mediocre sound that way.

I want to point out the gross error in 'logic' that is made by someone that has no idea what they are talking about.

If I capture a track into my ADC and then I overlay it back over the original PCM from the 24/192 download that I recorded from and FFT shows less than a .1 dB variation in Amplitude response (or any other FFT analysis shows virtually null) then I have one simple question:

How is a $250 system able to produce such accuracy if it's not 'some serious gear'?

How about this. We setup your DAC and Streamer into an ADC and we setup my $250 computer into your DAC and into an ADC. Capture 9 tracks with one system. 1 track with the other. You can then analyze however you would like for as long as you like (you won't know which is which) and let us know which track is different from the other 9 and if it's the track from the $250 system or your streamer.

This should be a no problem for someone with such a highly resolving system.

@geoffkait

I see selective memory abilities are on full display.

In addition to FFT analysis I've also suggested 9 tracks recorded with one setup, 1 track with another.

Anyone can FULLY SIGHTED and with any bias affirming, ears only manner, evaluate the tracks and tell us when they hear a track that sounded like it came from either a $250 computer or a $2500 or even an $8000 streamer.

Most here strike me as the type that if they are in the hospital for a medical emergency that they are going to want all the diagnostic and measurement gear and procedures brought to bare.

 

this proposed testing protocol is not valid for several reasons including the simple fact that it is not double-blind

Who said it was going to be double blind?

I say "relatively simple" because of course you would need a proper ABX comparator and you would need to level-match the two signals to within a tight tolerance

Why would you think there are going to be level differences at either the DAC or Amp output via change in Ethernet cabling? You don’t understand how this works.

any proposed alternative testing protocol would itself have to be established as scientifically valid which this proposed protocol would probably not be considered because it is so suspect on so many points

There there are two protocols here depending what is being tested. One is double blind but not strictly AB/X since it is self administered. Another is Single Blind since the person at the network switch would know what cable is in situ. The order would be randomly selected.

the obvious truth of his hypothesis strongly suggest that he suffers extreme bias in this instance and should be disqualified from formulating the test but could perhaps participate in the testing as an observer or contributor.

The obvious truth is hypothesis are meant to be reviewed by others and either reproduced or debunked. Anyone could be shown how to plug and unplug Ethernet cabling. Or I can do it and it can be recorded and monitored. No biggie either way.

I’ve stated under what conditions I would accept being incorrect in my suppositions. Including a cable that is 2600% longer and 9100% cheaper per foot than a 12 foot boutique cable. All on a $250 system that others said produced well recorded DAC => ADC.

My proposed method is also open to pointed and technically sound critique.

You are welcome to bring experts into the discussion if you wish and can.

There it is! Did I call that one or not? It was just a matter of time. The Appeal to Controlled Blind Testing argument. One of the most oft used logical fallacies of them all.

You may have missed the evaluation of a $250 computer output and that of high end streamer where the claimant could listen at their leisure fully sighted. On their own equipment, their own room, their own material, their own time frame.

Fully sighted testing and complete control of the tracks.

It comes down to this there are more than double blind testing for discrimination elimination.

As a person with a studied familiarity with established and validated scientific testing protocols I am not familiar with the term discrimnation elimination?

I meant bias elimination (that of sighted input).

It is a common error made by those lacking in scientific discipline to underestimate and oversimplify the requirements needed to conduct statistically valid scientific testing irregardless of the discipline under consideration in this case the components that comprise a Music Reproduction System.

And anyone that is a subject matter expert is more than free to weigh in. My proposed method will either stand or modify based on input.

Please also understand that I’m not out to find general norms per-se. I’m testing individual claims. If there are a group of people making the same claims then the N simply increases.

Again if some one says they can jump 20 feet straight up, the bar to jump over isn’t being evaluated, it’s the claim of covering 20 vertical feet.

verity of your beliefs.

I don’t have a ’verity of beliefs’. I have data that leads me to a conclusion that:

1. I can’t hear the difference between 315 foot of generic CAT5 and 12 foot of boutique CAT8
2. Three other people that have tried the ADC’d tracks can’t tell when 315 foot or 12 foot of cabling was in play
3. No one has debunked my DA/AD setup is of inadequate resolution
4. So far I’ve interacted with 12 audiophiles that believe in the audibility of a data cable but I can’t give $2000 away.

Even in this thread no one that has DL’d the tracks has hazarded a guess.

What are you feeding with Ethernet? I can always order and evaluate.

I don’t think you are understanding the proposed in situ method. I would take a track of the claimants choosing, take a 1 minute interval of their choosing of said track. I would tack on a 15 second elevator clip of music.

This would be two rounds of 8 and changes would or wouldn’t happen during the 15 second interval. A cable will ALWAYS be unplugged/plugged in. Could be the same cable could be the other.

There could be anything from 0 to 7 changes. The order would be randomly chosen prior to each evaluation run.

Of course I encourage the claimant, prior to sitting for the sight bias controlled portion, to interact directly with the switch and they could play music and swap cabling out to their hearts content. I would hope 1 - 3 hours would be enough. As long as your streamer has 6-10 seconds worth of buffer you should be able to swap in real-time without interruption in playback.

Part of the origin this approach was me listening through the Phillips Golden Ear Challenge and seeing that it could work for other evaluation.

You are correct that the tracks I uploaded had a change made during playback as some people are fans of quick A/B.