why do people feel the need to buy expensive cable
Hyperbole, hyperbole, hyperbole. Sellers are at pains to magnify whatever differences/improvements their 1K product has over the standard 50-buck special. Listeners are so excited when they actually hear any difference, whether it's genuinely an "improvement" or not, that they exaggerate the changes that they hear. And so it spirals onward. |
dynaquest4 ... the "subtle" (positive) changes that exotic cables may or may not be able to achieve, are reported as "jawdropping," dramatic," "night and day," etc. If switching out a cable can make those kinds of improvements, you would have had to have been previously using metallic thread.Not exactly. What you're describing are subjective impressions, so naturally they will vary from person to person. I've eaten burritos that I thought were much too hot, yet my wife thought they were just hot enough. Get it? |
Except, Elizabeth, the "subtle" (positive) changes that exotic cables may or may not be able to achieve, are reported as "jawdropping," dramatic," "night and day," etc. If switching out a cable can make those kinds of improvements, you would have had to have been previously using metallic thread. Additionally, cables shouldn't introduce anything into the music program, they should only eliminate outside interferences. Anything else you "hear" after switching cables, IMO, is voodoo magic. |
everyone knows some have the ability to see fine print others cannot. everyone knows some can taste ingredients others can’t detect. some minds solve puzzles faster than others. there are varying levels of skill and ability in all endeavors . if you have an ability I do not possess I will not declare you wrong. eyes, noses, tongues, minds, hands, feet, and hearts come in varying capabilities. why would anyone purport all ears to function identically? |
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If it all sounded the same, we'd have stopped with Edison's phonograph. Reductio ad absurdum. The salient point is that everything interacts. To deny otherwise is counterintuitive. Some are more sensitive to some interactions than others. Some need to [and can afford to] drive the newest/flashiest/everything-est and others are content to just have really good sound. Soto voce: The problems here are "10,000 posters" who prattle on repeatedly with no substantiated examples or proof and those who steadfastly maintain "does not happen with my level of equipment" |
shadorne"The onus of proof is on those with wild ridiculous claims" I would agree to a point and given that the cable market for Music Reproduction Systems is sizeable and so many contributors to this forum have remarked about the various sonic improvements to be derived from such cables it would seem that the " wild ridiculous claims" would in truth emmanate from the very few people on this board who keep raising they're objections that these cables make any difference at all within properly functioning Music Reproduction Systems the "onus" would be on you. However on the other hand I think no one here is obligated to prove anything to anybody and that it would be best if we each expressed the results of our own first hand experiences with matters related to Music Reproduction Systems and not to demand from others that they do research for ourselves. However what is happening is that these few who claim it all sounds the same then ask the rest of us to proof they're case which makes no sense and then they call us delusional or snakeoil salesman! It is a crazy world here on Audiogon where we cannot discuss what we hear without being subjected to personal attacks and even some of the attackers here justify the in the name of "science." |
gdhal"You continue to place the onus of proof on the wrong party. I have provided ample opportunity for those who state the impossible to demonstrate... I do not understand this does not make sense you have made a very specific claim here you stated wire is not directional but then you want me to proof what you claim that is very odd! As for your "opportunity to demonstrate" I do not understand that either you have made a claim how will I demonstrate you're claim that is for you to do? |
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Well.....garden hoses (and especially fire hoses) are directional for sure. Makes me crazy when the manufacturer (who doesn’t believe in directionality) puts the male and female connectors on the wrong end and I have to change them to get proper pressure and flow. The difference is startling. Ever been pumping gas and notice that the flow is slow? Yep. The gas delivery hose was mounted backwards. You get more fuel, faster and for less money, when the hose is mounted in the correct direction. |
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Well, obviously if your hearing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, you know, if you’re 105 years old or whatever, and/or your system is not (rpt not) revealing enough and/or has at least one or two errors in it and/or you don’t follow proper protocol for cable evaluation, such as using fully broken in cables, the chances are excellent you won’t hear much, if anything. If in fact any cable evaluation was actually performed which it probably wasn’t. Same as it always was, a lot of who shot John. |
Actually there are many things in Science that are not (rpt not) subject to revision. The absolute constant of the speed of light in a vacuum, the mass of an electron, all elements have exactly the same composition everywhere in the universe, the universe is expanding forever, the physical characteristics of a black hole have been known with absolute certainty since the 1960s, the hypotenuse of a right triangle given the other two sides is never in doubt, the equivalence of energy and mass (E= Mc2), all electromagnetic waves are comprised of photons, and all manufactured wire is directional. |
"[Nature] ... never says "Yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will someday experience its "No"—most theories, soon after conception." Albert Einstein >>>>As fate would have it in this hobby when a test proves negative it actually doesn’t mean “No.” It means “Maybe” because maybe the test was flawed and we’ll have to have someone else take a crack at it. And if the results are positive it probably means YES to the theory, though prudence dictates we get some more postive results on board for good measure. Any test is only one data point. Apologies to Albert. |
OK, boys and girls, what time is it? It’s time for a little, What the heck is happening to science these days? Taken from Zen and the Art of Debunkery. Enjoy. Italics provided by your humble scribe. Seeing with humility, curiosity and fresh eyes was once the main point of science. But today it is often a different story. As the scientific enterprise has been bent toward exploitation, institutionalization, hyperspecialization and new orthodoxy, it has increasingly preoccupied itself with disconnected facts in a psychological, social and ecological vacuum. So disconnected has official science become from the greater scheme of things, that it tends to deny or disregard entire domains of reality and to satisfy itself with reducing all of life and consciousness to a dead physics. As the millennium turns, science seems in many ways to be treading the weary path of the religions it presumed to replace. Where free, dispassionate inquiry once reigned, emotions now run high in the defense of a fundamentalized "scientific truth." As anomalies mount up beneath a sea of denial, defenders of the Faith and the Kingdom cling with increasing self-righteousness to the hull of a sinking paradigm. Faced with provocative evidence of things undreamt of in their philosophy, many otherwise mature scientists revert to a kind of skeptical infantilism characterized by blind faith in the absoluteness of the familiar. Small wonder, then, that so many promising fields of inquiry remain shrouded in superstition, ignorance, denial, disinformation, taboo . . . and debunkery. |
I think this guy gets it right: "[Nature] ... never says "Yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will someday experience its "No"—most theories, soon after conception." Albert Einstein The quote is in an article in Forbes titled "Scientific Proof Is a Myth". The main premise of the article is that "nothing in science can ever truly be proven. It's always subject to revision." https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/11/22/scientific-proof-is-a-myth/#78d5fbb62fb1 Interesting article that is pertinent to the cable debate, IMO. |
Once in a great while I bother to read some of the drivel in the forums. I can truthfully say that I have never found anything useful here. Willemj has a point. Years ago while I was at IIT in Chicago I majored briefly in Electrical Engineering. I did so only briefly as EE thought that knowing how to make a circuit that worked meant that further science to make a circuit that sounded better was irrelevant. Shortly after that I went back to physics. EEs don't engage in science; they forsake it saying they know everything. I have a friend who is self taught and who has solved the problem of some frequencies getting through amplification faster than others. He has a focus control that makes everything else sound broken. I won't list his name as he will not bother with 1950s scientists. |
So I disconnected all of my power cords and replaced them with the stock cords. I didn't tell my wife what I did, but asked her to listen to a couple of her favorite songs. Her reaction, what happened to the bass, his voice sounds dead, it doesn't sound good, what did you do? Hearing improvements makes one a believer. |
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All true. And yet we still have some of the highest income inequality among developed nations. Life expectancy has gone up for those making over $150,000 and remains stagnant for those who make under that amount. More people are rejecting vaccines. Health care is still viewed as a commodity and not a necessity. Science is being roundly rejected by a large portion of our country. Voodoo and superstition are being forced into some curriculum and claimed to be just as valid as the science being rejected. It seems that for that for every two forward steps we take, some take one step, if not more, backwards. We are a curious people. All the best, Nonoise |
Well, in advanced economies we have had a roughly 2% per capita growth of income over the last century or more, even though world population has increased enormously. We have more than doubled life expectancy, we have eradicated many chronic diseases, and we have increased levels of education enormously, just to mention a few metrics. And whereas the benefits of all this were originally limited to Western Europe and the US, this pattern is now extending more and more all over the globe. |
Civilization has advanced over the last few centuries by applying rigorous standards to distinguish between nonsense and truth. Some audiophiles and their obscurantist merchants like yourself (I originally meant Geoff, but it seems Audiotroy wants to join that crowd) have worked hard to stop that progress in the world of audio. |
Hey lets move this discussion out of the realm of audio, with all of those conspiracy theorists that are just trying to get you to spend money for obvious fullfery that no one can hear, obvious self hypnosis. Lets look at steaks they all taste the same right? So your $11 Diner steak, is going to taste the same as a well aged Wegu Steak from Japan, or a well aged steak at $50 from Peter Lugars right. after all a steak is just a piece of cut up meat, therefore, they should all taste the same. How about performance tires on a Porsche? A tire is just some steel belts encased in a rubber shell, so a $800 Pirelli P Z is going to perform the same way as a $200 Hankook on that Porsche right? Rolling resitance, or handling between two tires shouldn’t make a difference at speed right? Or how about a bottle of ripple at $5 a gallon vs a fine $20 bottle of wine vs a $2,000.00 bottle? They will all taste the same right? Lets draw that analogy into the relm of science, pour all three wines into a gass chromatograph and see what the readout says, H20, some organic compounds, a gass chromatograph can’t discern what tastes good, so the measurements theory is now thrown out the window, and how much differnence is the statisticual data when all three samples should be identical. Shakespere summed it up perfectly, "there is more in heaven and earth then in your philosophy." Sometimes experential data is the most helpful and relevant of all. Dave and Troy Audio Doctor NJ |
