Food for thought for all us audiophiles

"Instead of suggesting the convergent effect for cases of consensus, I’d like to suggest sheer politeness. It’s better than turning to the person listening next to you and asking “Are you DEAF?!?”"
-Hifibri

Wonderful observation, and hilarious too!

Curious all this.

My wife's sister's husband is an engineer, music lover, and wire skeptic. Big amps and Ohm speakers? OK. But wire is wire. He also says old men (which he is rapidly becoming) can't hear the difference if there is any anyway because "our hearing is shot".

I am in early middle age and my eyes are going and I have to ask people to repeat themselves. But my "ears" have never been better. By that, I mean I am able to pick out subtle differences in musical performances, recordings and stereo systems that I could not detect or articulate as a younger person. I have "learned" to listen better. I would also argue that there is a lot more to "hearing" than high frequency extension, such as things like spatial cues and PRAT.

With that said, I am wondering if any of you can point me towards any published double blind tests that describe:
1) perceived differences in audio equipment - say one of the recognized "best" CD players under $500 vs the "best" under $2000 vs the "best" over $10,000
2) perceived differences in audio cables across a similarly broad price range
3) a test of a group of self-proclaimed audiophiles vs a group of non-audiophiles in terms of ability to distinguish differences between wires or equipment
4) a test of a group of older people vs a group of younger people in terms of ability to distinguish differences between wires or equipment?

Turns out the wife of the above mentioned engineer (otherwise known as my sister-in-law) is an epidemiologist who recently developed the double blind test for a successful cancer vaccine. If I can find the time and overcome inertia, I am considering trying to get the wife to design a little study to address these silly questions, and support or refute her husbands biases. And that would be either a very good or a very bad idea, or both.

Now I just need to convince a local stereo dealer to lend me several $100K worth of stuff...

Curious that the response to this article has led a few members to actually fall into the holes the article refers to.
S7horton has decided they "disagree"(?!) with the graph; on what basis? Because it might be right? Of course it's true that not everyone will lose hearing exactly as the graph shows, but the point is that ON AVERAGE (that's how science creates graphs) we all lose our hearing bit by bit as we age, and that varies depending on how we treat our ears.
Then Hifibri has presented a pointless comparison between cheap lamp cable and purpose-made hifi speaker cable. No-one would argue that quality speaker cable wont sound better than bell-wire, but the article was talking about at what point spending any more becomes pointless, such as whether $7000 cables can really sound better than $70 or $700 cables. It's no different to saying "this $10 watch tells the time better than a sundial, so this $5000 watch must tell the time heaps better than the cheap one." Chances are they are both as accurate. My own real experience is that my $20 TAG copy from Bali has worked flawlessly for 15 years, while my $500 Seiko failed after 6 years.

Back to audio... To me the simple mistake is that too many audiophiles - myself included - use terms such as "better", "improved" and "accurate" interchangeably. Yet these are not the same.
For example, a new IC cable may make my system sound "better" or make an "improvement" to my ears and brain, but may have actually made my system less accurate in terms of a faithful reproduction of the original recording. Whether that makes a costly cable worth the money comes down to my own tastes. But whether that cable actually carries a signal more accurately can't truly be tested by human ears, as this is too subjective.

That's my 2 cents worth...

I think that it merits pointing out that most of the music is still in the midrange and one can still have excellent midrange hearing acuity in spite of having a high frequency deficit. And yes, I just turnted fifty and do not wear ear plugs at concerts, mea culpa.

Carl109, I’m not sure I understand the point(s) you are trying to make but I believe we are in agreement on at least two. As you noted:

“For example, a new IC cable may make my system sound "better" or make an "improvement" to my ears and brain, but may have actually made my system less accurate in terms of a faithful reproduction of the original recording. Whether that makes a costly cable worth the money comes down to my own tastes.”

This shows we agree there are audible differences between high end cables and therefore we both disagree with supposition of the article. We also agree that whether the differences are ‘worth the money’ is a personal decision. That is not the point of the article but it is (in part) the point of what you called a ‘pointless comparison’. A person’s perception of those differences are the key. The example I used was to show how differences can mean more to one person than another. It was night and day to me, but not a difference worth considering for my brother and therefore would not be ‘worth the money’ to him. Additionally, there can always be differences between cables or any piece of equipment without the listener being able to decide which is better. Different does not mean better.

As far as your point that cabling may make your system sound “better” or make an “improvement”, but may change your system in terms of faithful reproduction of the original recording, don’t sweat it. You probably weren’t there when the recording was made so you can’t know how it should sound. Besides the recording is only a facsimile of the event. It is not THE event and it is impossible to recreate the original event from the recording. It’s more important to choose the equipment that sounds best to you. Seek the equipment that increases your enjoyment of the music because that’s what it’s all about (for me anyway). And remember, there is no accounting for taste, personal preferences are not debatable.