7500 for USED cables? Are they joking?

Lmb, you and bomarc restore my faith in the 'gon. When I first became a member of this community, one of its most prolific posters wrote to say that he was by no means sure that I was welcome (in his eyes) because I had dared mention the utility of testing and measurement. And here you are, having an erudite and thoughtful discussion with no one playing pile-on. Wonderful!

Lmb, you make the clearest case for the value of careful testing with trained listeners that I have read. I wish I had written it. If audiophiles are willing to lay aside some of their apprehensions about controlled testing and lend the testers their highly educated ears, we could make enormous progress.

Can we trust Northwestern U? Link to recent auditory testing:

http://www.stereophile.com/shownews.cgi?1183

One of my favorite folks in audio is Lynn Olson, I quote

"The deepest challenge of designing high fidelity equipment is... reconciling the interior experience of listening with the technical world of measurements. If you can't reconcile the two, or insist that only one exists, you are flying blind. Since I've been designing system speakers for the last twenty years, I've spent much of that time finding associations between the perceptual experience and measurements. With so many possible analytic techniques (frequency response, group delay variation, inter-drive phase angle, polar response vs. frequency, cumulative waterfall display, IM distortion vs. frequency, etc), the hard part is deciding which set of measurements are the most significant." from "Finding Common Ground" at www.aloha-audio.com/library/findingsCG.html

The Article "Finding Common Ground" goes on to describe his findings using a spectrum analyzer that, he argues, undercut many of the common assumptions about distortion that have directed the development of audio for several decades. It's very nice and worth the read.

In any event, we have to reconcile the listening experience with measurements and I certainly do not think we have learned how to measure everything or that we measure the right thing all of the time. If we think we understand it all than we'll stop looking, eh? That being said, I fall on the side on the argument that measurments will tell us most of why wire does what it does and that a huge body of folklore and hype can be avoided with a little respect for EEs and very basic measurements. I use very inexpensive but well designed wire.

As the good Bishop notes, It's nice to have civil discussion on the topic without anyone calling the other deaf or naive.

Sincerely, I remain

Well, this is just like S-pile! A straightforward report on a nice piece of research involving training listeners to hear differences, and then a paragraph of pure tripe:

"Although small in scope, both studies lend credence to audiophiles' assertions that they can hear minor differences—such as those between amplifiers or CD players, devices with extremely small frequency-response discrepancies—and that the ability to do so improves with practice. The studies also call into question the validity of blind tests that do not account for the skills of the participants or provide a meaningful way for them to learn the sonic characteristics of the equipment or recordings being compared."

This research provides NO evidence that audiophiles or anyone else can hear the kinds of frequency response differences between typical solid-state amplifiers (which is not to say that all amps are indistinguishable). And anyone doing auditory research knows you have to train listeners (including audiophiles, who would need to be trained in detecting the particular differences under test).

Granted, not every DBT ever done has been accompanied by adequate training. But the only way to really discredit such efforts is to do a test where listeners ARE properly trained, and show that they can hear differences. And that, as people like me love to point out, ain't ever been done yet.

Well said Bomarc, but Spile has to accomodate it's advertisers, of course.

Bishopwill, it is certainly the knee-jerk reaction of 99% of "audiophiles" to completely reject the notion that they may fall prey to marketing hype, aesthetics, and popularity. Seems to be lots of hyperbole, i.e. "amp A has a MUCH LARGER soundstage than amp B" etc...,but never the willingness to have a friend over, relax with a drink [or not], and do some blind testing.

IMHO, pride can "get in your back pocket."

Charlie