Phil Leigh wrote: > pfarrell Wrote: >> Phil Leigh wrote: >>> I really can't help thinking that a lot of these debates are driven >>> rational thinking overtaking practical reality. We "know" that the >>> transmission qualities of glass can exceed those of plastic so we >>> assume that a glass cable should sound better.
>> "can exceed" doesn't lead to "does exceed". The plastic in the >> tupperware containers in my fridge is exceeded by the quality of most >> glass, expect the stained glass in my church. > > Ya' know Pat...sometimes I just don't know if you are agreeing with me > or not! i was an engineer before I became an audiophile. I agree that many audiophiles will "assume that glass ... sound better" but I don't know if you are claiming that or not. I do claim that the assumption is not justified. Assume there exists a perfect glass fiber cable (I will claim that no such thing exists, but we can assume it). What we really have is an ordered list, something like: 1) perfect glass fiber cable 2) really good glass fiber cable 3) fine glass fiber cable 4) acceptable glass fiber cable 5) crappy and unacceptable glass fiber cable. I will posit that cables #2 through #5 exist. And in parallel, we can have a similar ordered list of plastic cables: 1) perfect plastic cable 2) really good plastic cable 3) fine plastic cable 4) acceptable plastic cable 5) tupperware plastic made into cable. 6) Melmac plastic made into cable. What I don't know is how you would order the two lists as one. Clearly the opaque melmac plastic cable would be last, and the perfect glass cable would still be number one. And assuming a miracle, and the combined ordered list is made, I have no idea where the "audible" characteristic would come in. Or whether or not the "audible" characteristic would be a function of something else, say cable length. What I know is that I used both plastic and glass and coax between my SqueezeBox and my Benchmark DAC-1, and could not hear any differences at all. None. Your ears may be different. -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com/ _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
