to say what is quoted there - then to sell nearly 20 different speaker cables is contradictory????? Just Asking ????
Kimber cable "how much"
- Thread starter EYEREX
- Start date
to say what is quoted there - then to sell nearly 20 different speaker cables is contradictory????? Just Asking ????
I was surprised at how big the differences were between amps the last time I auditioned a set (last year, and I was trying stuff around £2k-£4k for an integrated.
Also, the PSU has a huge amount to do with it - the amp may be able to amplify 100% accurately from 0-1MHz, but if the PSU can't respond quickly enough, it doesn't matter how good the amp circuit is....
So to the non believers, if we took 3 cables, one from copper, one copper coated in silver and a pure silver cable.... Would they all sound the same ? Or should they sound the same by scientific theory ?
I've yet to try silver bassed cables, it's on my list to try one day. Changing from gold plated screw speaker plugs to silver plated plugs which are soldered on gave a me a perceived improvement. So I plan to try some silver cables. (fixing room acoustics first though).
I've yet to try silver bassed cables, it's on my list to try one day. Changing from gold plated screw speaker plugs to silver plated plugs which are soldered on gave a me a perceived improvement. So I plan to try some silver cables. (fixing room acoustics first though).
Soldato
- Joined
- 16 Jan 2003
- Posts
- 10,976
- Location
- Nottingham
Please don't tell me you actually believe a cable can have a right direction? It's a piece of wire.
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 4,790
- Location
- London
Sorry yes very good. Bit slow this week.
Well, the question is can anyone tell the difference between them? I believe silver and copper are both fine for producing cables up to the job, so as long as they are both of sufficient design (16AWG seems acceptable for copper, not sure about silver), I can't see why anyone would be able to tell the difference. But If someone wants to prove me wrong they are welcome. Again, it's not about being sounding the same by scientific theory, it's about whether they sound the same based upon scientific evidence.
I don't get why anyone uses any kind of fancy speaker plugs, if you're that concerned why not just go bare?
Anyway, on the subject of tests, a few ideas (this is a bit of a brain dump):
Pick 2 cables A & B that you want to check the difference of (I'd propose one that should theoretically do the job, and another a lot more expensive that should theoretically be neutral - i.e. doesn't have anything sneaky in there to intentionally alter the signal). You'll need a fair few trials, so you don't want to be trying too many cables as it will take forever.
Pick another cable, C which shouldn't be up to the job, some awful bellwire or similar.
Start with an initial trial, comparing cable C to one of cable A or B.
Analyse results. If you have enough trials you might at this point split out anyone who was unable to spot cable C (although this can get v dodgy when you go down this road). Of course it nobody was able, stop at this point as there's not much point carrying on!
Next, move to trial 2, comparing cable A to B.
Now, the big problems are, even after disguising the cables, you'll still have expectation bias. One way around this of course would be for someone else to swap around the cables independent of the listeners, but then you have the problem of them interfering with the experiment. One other way around could be to use duplicates of A and B and asking for the listeners to match up A to C or D etc. and let the listeners switch back and forth at will. I expect this could lead to problems with trial size though and it could end up taking hours.
You would have course have to pre-define number of trials and publish all the data as well. If you're only doing enough trials to analyse across the whole group don't start doing subgroup analysis - it's just cherry picking!
Here is an interesting cable company, they claim to be different and publish some data, claim is they are fixing phase distortion.......
http://www.telluriumq.com/page18.html
Why use plugs.... Unterminated copper will tarnish and you will have a poor connection.
As a minimum I tin the end of the cable.... Then types of solder could also have an effect.
I find that the way you terminate and the types of joints you pass the signal through has possible more effect than the type of wire used inside the cable...... Another variable to consider.
http://www.telluriumq.com/page18.html
Why use plugs.... Unterminated copper will tarnish and you will have a poor connection.
As a minimum I tin the end of the cable.... Then types of solder could also have an effect.
I find that the way you terminate and the types of joints you pass the signal through has possible more effect than the type of wire used inside the cable...... Another variable to consider.
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 4,790
- Location
- London
Err, where's the published data?
Some nice graphs and some explanation of what the issues are they are claiming to have "solved"
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 4,790
- Location
- London
Some nice graphs and some explanation of what the issues are they are claiming to have "solved"
Well, as i've said about a million times, and as you've said yourself, scientific theory doesn't mean anything when you have listening tests. WHY would a company bother doing any research into explaining how their product works, when they don't appear to have tested their initial hypothesis in the first place?
The graphs don't mean anything to me. There's nothing about the data they came from, on their own they are useless
The site seems to be loaded with pseudoscience
They Avoiding making any real claims, lots of weasel words
Product reviews all over the product section, but again no claims or test results
It pretty much ticks all the "snake oil" boxes. If they actually made any real testable claims I might make the effort of reporting them to the ASA, but like all other hi-fi companies they've avoided that. Wonder why!
Are you just trolling me here
Well, as i've said about a million times, and as you've said yourself, scientific theory doesn't mean anything when you have listening tests. WHY would a company bother doing any research into explaining how their product works, when they don't appear to have tested their initial hypothesis in the first place?
The graphs don't mean anything to me. There's nothing about the data they came from, on their own they are useless
The site seems to be loaded with pseudoscience
They Avoiding making any real claims, lots of weasel words
Product reviews all over the product section, but again no claims or test results
It pretty much ticks all the "snake oil" boxes. If they actually made any real testable claims I might make the effort of reporting them to the ASA, but like all other hi-fi companies they've avoided that. Wonder why!
Are you just trolling me here
Actually starting thinking you are the one Trolling !!!
So because they haven't printed a statement like " 7 out 10 listeners in a blind test correctly identified our cables over brand X" it's all snake oil ??
The comments in this thread have been about the lack of science backed up with some blind testing correct ?
As the website states they are not about to publish all the research they have done and give it to competitors etc.
They are making an attempt to put some "science" and research into their product and direction.
Because you don't understand the graph it's meaningless ??? isn't that your short coming ?
So pseudoscience is when YOU don't understand something ???
Then you go on to make assumptions that they haven't tested their theories or statements.... Sorry that's just laughable if you think they won't have listen and tested the product... if you read far enough you see they test and don't release anything until they feel it clearly out performs everything else at the price point.
Seems they feel they have something to protect as they have also applied for a patent.
Do a bit more reading and see what back ground the designer has behind him, he ain't no numpty !!!
It's isn't for any company, what ever the product to "prove" and tell you their's is the best or better and that you must buy it as that would always leave the door open for pointless legal challenges.
Do car companies prove their car is the best on the road... Does Ford prove the Focus is the best C segment car ?
If you are waiting for someone to prove what is best and choose your Hi-Fi for you, then it will be a long wait.
Well the top graph shows how some cables may not respond to what works out to be a 500kHz square wave leading edge! It's so far out of band it's just silly; the claim may be genuine and the cable may perform 'better' by lowering the inter-conductor capacitance, but it's moot since it's categorically inaudible.
Even if the cable was so 'bad' it turned a 20kHz square wave into a SINE wave by slowing down the transient response this much, it'd still be vastly irrelevant since we can't hear the harmonics of the square wave in the first place (ie, the 20kHz square wave, if you're lucky enough to hear it at all, sounds the same as a 20kHz sine wave)! Again, in digital CD media this is exactly what happens and no harmonics or desirable audio of any kind above 20kHz is passed from the DAC, so if a 20kHz square wave were recorded to a CD (not a clever thing to try btw!), the reconstruction filter would ensure it came out as a 20kHz sine wave. To put it another way, transient response better than full scale within 50microseconds is unnecessary.
Not giving the rest of that article and its poorly resized graphs any more time!
I'll probably regret chipping in here but... as I mentioned in a thread some time ago about cables I've had a chance to listen to quite a few over the years. The most impressive I heard was the Atlas Asimi interconnect, which is a pure silver cable (about £2500 worth), which was compared to their Mavros copper cable (about £800 worth and very favourably reviewed). Night and day difference... improved every aspect of sound.. very detailed smooth treble with deep bass... well worth a demo..
And sorry guys
I can't prove it scientifically. What do you expect? After all, I failed my Chemistry O level and my Physics O level twice
P.S. I'm gonna go hide in a bomb proof bunker now... so do your worst
it's as if the pro magic cable brigade don't understand why these cable companies would go to so much trouble to make meaningless graphs, advertising campaigns and snazzy websites ..... i mean, it's not like they have anything to gain .... oh wait .... LOL
Branding makes no difference to the suitability of the materials used in construction and gauge of the cable. Branding does not allow amplifiers to drive speakers more correctly. Or differently correct. Branded cable does not allow a better electricity to flow through it.
There are cables made of different material and different gauges of cable which are suitable for different speakers, amplifiers and the distance between them. That is all.
For a given setup, there are lots of suitable cable types. Some are expensive, some are not. If they're suitable though, they'll sound EXACTLY the same. That's why they'd be called suitable and "good" cable.
If you can discern a difference between two cables, it's because one, or maybe both, are causing signal degradation that a good (ie that allows the amp to drive the speaker correctly and predictably) cable would not.
Am I repeating myself enough?
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 4,790
- Location
- London
Actually starting thinking you are the one Trolling !!!
You start off with the straw man saying I'm the one who wants everything proven with scientific measurements. You then come back with a ridiculous website which features 2 graphs and some numbers and claim it's interesting, despite giving the impression earlier you wouldn't pay much attention to scientific measurements
Or are graphs and numbers only of interest to you when they tell you what you want to hear Well, that's one of the many reasons that makes this company look like it's selling snake oil to me.
What? You wouldn't publish your research because of the competitors?
Brilliant excuse. What might your competitiors do? Panic? Attempt to buy your company and it's IP? The consequences sound truely terrifying!
You haven't linked to any research, just a page with some waffle and 2 graphs. I admit I did feel a little surprised when I saw something about a -2db drop in something, which could well be audible, until I noticed it was at 500Khz.
Example of pseudoscience:
Did you know that I have a product which enhances your computers hard drive using quantum physics? It costs £10/m and my graphs demonstrate that it will improve your PC's aura in the 4THz band.
This is an exaddurated example of the kind of thing I think this site is doing
I dunno, but if I had actually done any testing of some research and demonstrated it did something, I would think "hey, this will help sell our product! And probably win us a nobel prize too. I think it might be a good idea to publish it.
I'm saying they don't appear to have tested their initial hypothesis. THey've not published anything to suggest that, why would I assume that they have on the basis of the contents of that website?
Oh, how reassuring. And they know it outperforms everything because...
Oh, well that definitely means it's worked then.
I don't care if he's cured cancer, AIDS, created a new space station in his garden shed, solved world hunger and come up with a plan to make the middle east happy. If he hasn't published anything, then it's pretty much irrelevant.
So why have they published any graphs at all comparing it to various brands?
Nothing to do with sales? Will they get pointless legal challenges? No, because they haven't named any actual products.What would be wrong with "here's our £5/m cable vs. a rival's £500/m cable. In our published paper we demonstrated that 20 trained hi-fi professionals could not tell the difference between them!"? Nothing.
No you're right, car companies never publish data about objective, testable claims on their cars compared to rivals like top speed, economy, acceleration speed.
Yeah it's starting to feel like it.
Apologies to everyone else for the sarcasm, I think I've been quite good in this thread so far but I can't take any of these posts seriously tonight.
Without any specifics, it's a fair bet to say that they should transmit the signals with varying levels of fidelity. Whether the difference in sound quality would be perceptible is the point that would need to be proven.
9designs2 said:
A perceived improvement? Write to Nature, quick!
Last edited:
Well as "an audio technology student...."
I guess you know more and have greater experience than Colin Wonfor
He may well have more experience but it certainly doesn't mean that he's not using his credentials to decieve people for monetary gain. Unfortunate, but common.
I'm not disputing the graph, I simply offered insight into it which indicates that the propsed benefit is, in practice, irrelevant. Proove me wrong.
Sarcasm and condescension is not beneficial to the discussion.
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 31 Jan 2004
- Posts
- 16,332
- Location
- Plymouth
This thread can't be far away from invoking Godwin's Law now!
Dr_Em> I'm starting to feel ignored.
You've suggested that you'd be interested in actually "listening" to a comparison of cables (unlike Oli, who seems to be happy to sit in his bunker throwing shells at anything that moves), and I've made an offer to both yourself a small number of additional people, such that we can actually try to setup a home dem to get a feel for ourselves as to whether cables make a difference.
So when do you wish to do it?